This Politico story highlights money spent on third-party candidates thought to boost Democratic chances of victory. 

But I’m genuinely pretty confused by the reporting: there’s a claim that the tactic “was used significantly more this year than in other recent elections, a POLITICO analysis found,” but the way the data are presented in the piece, it’s difficult to follow who spent what on whom, and how that compares to other cycles, and it seems like it includes both spending on third-party candidates and attack ads critiquing Republicans from the right.  And though the piece says that “[b]oth parties have long sought to leverage third-party candidates to help them in their races,” there’s no mention of the amount spent in a similar fashion to help Republican candidates.