Oct 31, 2022

Here we go again….we beat last week.

• $237,862,132.04 in IE last week vs $220,489,926.01 the week before vs $76,588,087.53 the week after Labor Day
• $1,211,846,001.09 since Labor Day
• $1,890,558,799.91 so far this cycle total
• 12% of all IE spent over the entire cycle was spent last week…..insane
• $200,483,612.08 that’s how much Senate Leadership Fund has spent since Labor Day, this single group has spent 17% of all IE in the last 2 months‍
• $102,286,289.37 is what Senate Majority PAC has spent over the same period, almost half‍
• $141,581,022.44 is how much has been spent in the PA Senate race since 9/4
• GA Senate race will also cross the $100M threshold since Labor Day this week, $96,348,753.56 currently
• House Republicans got outspent by House Dems again, $36,330,653.39 spent in opposition to Dems and $46,761,722.73 spent in opposition to Republicans.

#MoneyTalks – What do all these numbers mean?

House Races

Numbers are below but when you cross reference Republican and Democratic largest opposition spends you begin to see how defensive the Democratic posture is at the moment. Though Democrats outspent Republicans last week, when you look at where Democrats are making their largest expenditures, you can see the vast majority of money is being spent to protect Dem incumbents or traditional Dem seats. Conversely, Republican opposition spend is being spent exclusively on offense in Democrat held seats.

If the environment were such that Democrats may have a chance to hold the house, or be more evenly split, we would see some of the large Dem expenditures targeting vulnerable Republicans, but that isn’t happening.  Though there are some vulnerable Republicans, such as Valadao in CA-22, the environment is so bad DCCC was forced to spend $1M last week to support their own candidate(Rudy Salas), while Valadao only saw $266,102.71 in opposition spend and Republicans spent $1.6M in opposition to Salas. Compare that to Virginia 7, where Dem groups spent $2.5M against the Republican challenger to Dem incumbent Rep. Spanberger.

For Context, RealClearPolitics has 33 seats pegged as TossUps, 28 are held by Democrats. 30 seats are pegged Lean GOP, 18 of those are held by Dems.

Senate Races

• CO still doesn’t seem to be real.  If it were, the folks controlling the $1B+ that has already rolled thru this election would be pouring money into the state.  But for now, its still just the League of Conservation Voters.
• WA is getting some attention from the Planned Parenthood IE group and a PAC supporting Republican nominee Smiley, $6M in the last week isn’t nothing. But compared to the $19M that went into AZ last week, a race folks were saying Republicans couldn’t win a short time ago, or the $9M that went into WI where polling averages have Sen. Johnson at+3.3, big money isn’t indicating a competitive race.
• AZ getting $19M last week very much indicates this is race is a serious swing seat; it moved from 6^th highest expenditures to 2^nd.
• Republican money really did pull out of NH. $2M opposing Bolduc, very little supporting him and only $500K opposing Sen. Hassan doesn’t indicate Republicans believe they can pick this up.
• NC continues to see heavy spending with $11.1M showing Democrats still believe its competitive and Republicans see work still to be done.

House Race Numbers

It is worth noting that the only overlap in the highest opposition spend is in VA-7 and ME-02.

Spending in Opposition to Democrats

Spending in Opposition to Republicans

Senate Races

Pennsylvania

$31,563,443.73 in the last week

Arizona

$19,338,585.42

Georgia

$16,352,555.47‍

Nevada

$15,757,192.26

North Carolina

$11,102,971.05

Wisconsin

$9,927,445.15

Ohio

$8,994,882.77

Washington

$6,712,751.82

New Hampshire

$2,982,108.53

Colorado

$2,565,087.13

These numbers are being generated by the 527tracker, a data platform developed by Perspective Strategies that aggregates, analyzes, and alerts to all federal Super PAC spending in real time. If these types of numbers or analysis are important to you, or if you are on a campaign and need real-time spending alerts, go check out the dashboard.  It is free with no CC required thru Election Day. www.527tracker.com‍

As always, this information intended to provide a broader perspective what is influencing DC with the hope of allowing for better hedging and decision making. These numbers are from the last week unless otherwise noted.

And happy to add others. Let us know if there are others who would like to receive it.