With control of the Senate at play in the 2014 election, tight races have seen astronomical spending from outside groups. Even with almost three months left until Election Day, an analysis of outside spending in the nine most competitive Senate races found several trends. Like previous Brennan Center analyses, we observed inadequate transparency and single-candidate spenders providing opportunities to avoid contribution limits. We also discovered two key findings:
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These nine Senate races have seen $72 million worth of independent expenditures thus far. As a point of comparison, in the 2010 midterms, nonparty outside spending reached only $97 million — and that was for the whole election in all 37 Senate races. The highest levels of independent expenditures in our sample were seen in North Carolina, with $14 million, and Kentucky, with $12 million.
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The competitive Senate races also reveal a potential new trend — organizations that benefit a single candidate and hide their donors. These single-candidate, dark-money groups make it impossible to know whether candidate contributors are attempting to curry favor by also making large donations to candidate-specific spenders.