Campaign Finance Institute: The year 2018 saw a record number of women candidates competing in major party primary elections*, with another record number making it through to next week’s general election. An analysis by the Campaign Finance Institute of pre-general… Continue reading

Fredreka Schouten for CNN. 

Release via email: More than 500 leadership PACs operated by sitting members of Congress raised over $150 million so far this election cycle. Of this sum, more than 60 percent came from political action committees (PACs) connected to companies, trade… Continue reading

NYT: For the final two weeks of the election, Democratic campaigns and outside groups are on track to substantially outspend Republicans, strategists on both sides say. Democrats are set to spend $143 million on television advertising in House races, compared… Continue reading

Ken Doyle for Bloomberg (I miss his daily Money & Politics report in my inbox): “Shadow parties,” outside groups allied with Democratic and Republican leaders, are eclipsing traditional political parties, according to two new studies of campaign spending in the… Continue reading

CPI: ActBlue, a nonprofit whose online fundraising tools have been used to varying degrees by nearly every Democrat running for Congress, says it has raised more than $2.9 billion for Democrats and progressive organizations since its founding in 2004. September… Continue reading

Campaign Finance Institute: Independent expenditures (IEs) reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for general election House and Senate contests have continued on a record pace, totaling $695 million through October 21st. This is $103 million more than on the… Continue reading

NYT: The most recent round of campaign finance disclosures, filed Saturday, showed that Republican national party committees, candidates in key House and Senate races and their top unlimited-money outside groups, or “super PACs,” had $337 million on hand as of… Continue reading

Nate Silver: The fundraising numbers are so good for Democrats — and so bad for Republicans — that it’s a little bit hard to know quite what to make of them. From a modelling standpoint, we’re extrapolating from years in… Continue reading

Open Secrets: This year’s midterm election cycle is slated to become the first and only member of the $5 billion club. The Center for Responsive Politics projects that more than $5 billion will be spent during the 2018 election, making… Continue reading

Back in April, I had a post where I expressed skepticism that Facebook’s plan for voluntary disclosure of who is running political ads will actually work. Here’s a snippet: Here’s a hypothetical to flesh out some issues. Let’s assume that… Continue reading