Running a political campaign, even for a House seat, can take a lot of money. This is especially true if the district happens to be competitive, and this cycle saw extremely high spending and engaged donors, especially on the Democratic side. Thanks to data compiled from the Federal Election Commission and OpenSecrets.org, we can now explore the database of all candidate spending and look at the baseline and how it’s changed from previous cycles. …
Figure 2 below plots out the last four cycles and the median cash spent in each race by category for competitive races, or races that were ultimately decided by less than 10 percentage points. The categories are, from left to right: Republican and Democratic incumbents; the Republican and Democratic challengers to those incumbents; and Republicans and then Democrats running in open seats. CONT.
Noah Rudnick, Sabato’s Crystal Ball
Figure 2. Median candidate campaign spending in competitive races by candidate status, 2012-2018
