Senate candidates spend millions on national fundraising ads

Candidates use different messages for local voters and national donors

An NPR analysis of Google Ads found that Democratic and Republican candidates in four major Senate races — Iowa, Georgia, Ohio and Texas — spent more than $15 million on advertising related to fundraising during the 2025-26 election cycle. About three-quarters of that spending went to ads that ran nationally, NPR reported. The ads often focused on national talking points, including attacking or defending President Trump or turning the Senate blue or red, rather than local issues.

NPR reported that the flow of outside-state funds had affected at least four competitive Senate races, where a majority of the money came from outside the state. Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Iowa Democratic nominee Josh Turek each received more than 80% of their itemized individual contributions from donors outside their states. NPR identified ActBlue and WinRed, two major grassroots fundraising platforms, as major catalysts for out-of-state fundraising.

Brandeis University professor of politics Zachary Albert said inexpensive digital-ad technology creates an incentive for candidates to rely on digital advertising. He also said lower transaction costs can make small-dollar solicitation worthwhile. “ActBlue and WinRed really reduced the transaction costs for contributing,” Albert said. “Even if you’re only yielding like a $5 or $10 contribution from someone like the costs of soliciting that are so much lower than they used to be, that it makes it worthwhile.”

NPR reported that with both parties and each candidate now having fundraising platforms, political hopefuls increasingly need to stand out from the crowd and are often shifting their messaging to a broader audience, which can result in using polarizing messaging to solicit funds. Wesleyan Media Project’s Michael Franz said candidates tend to have two sets of talking points for in-state and out-of-state ads. “In a general election campaign for a [local] TV ad, a candidate will never say, ‘I’m the Democrat,’ because they want to appeal to moderates and swing voters and they want voters across the aisle,” Franz said. “But with a digital ad that’s airing outside of your state, the party label becomes more important.”

The divide appears in ads from candidates in both parties. Former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is seeking to regain a place in the Senate, calls to turn his state blue, while Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins asks people to help turn his state’s Senate seat red. Iowa Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson touts her America First credentials in ads for her Senate race, saying she’s “America First,” while Ossoff in Georgia attacks Trump directly. Republicans currently control the Senate, but a number of toss-up races give Democrats a path to retake the chamber. Related NPR coverage cautioned that Democrats remained poised to make gains while polling raised warning signs about how many gains they might make.

Michael Heseltine, an Oxford University researcher who studies how members of Congress use social media, said candidates are spending more time and energy on national talking points even as a large amount of local messaging remains. “[If] we continue on that trend, you’ll probably find more and more members who have neglected their constituencies or at least not presented themselves as representatives of their constituencies,” he said.

The Ossoff campaign denied targeting audiences by location. In a statement to NPR, the campaign said it “is powered by small-dollar donors because the Senator refuses donations from corporate PACs and federal lobbyists.” The other campaigns mentioned in the analysis either declined to comment or did not respond to interview requests.

Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, described a new era of campaigning in which candidates have two major stakeholders to appeal to: a local voter base and a donor base that is often larger and nationwide. “When Jon Ossoff is trying to compete for votes, he’s competing against Georgia Republicans,” Hopkins said. “But when Jon Ossoff is trying to compete for dollars, he’s competing for attention and for donations, ultimately with other prominent Democratic candidates.”

OpenSecrets data shows that the amount of out-of-state money in congressional campaigns has risen during each election cycle, NPR reported. NPR also reported that candidates are urged to promote the party platform to obtain outside funds. Hopkins attributed that practice to party platforms becoming more homogeneous and to changes in campaign-finance laws. Related NPR coverage reported that Democrats and Elon Musk continued to dominate midterm campaign fundraising.

Hopkins contrasted the national fundraising route with the traditional local path to political success. “It used to be that the pathway to success was to rise up through your local party, building the support of local elites in your community,” he said. He also said, “The path to political success increasingly goes through a set of, ‘ATM districts’ around the country that are known to give a lot of money either to Democrats or the Republicans.”

In states dominated by one party, donors might elect to send their funds to a more competitive state to help influence elections, said Sarah Bryner, a director who studies campaign finance at Public Agenda, a research organization focused on democracy. “People from California really don’t feel like they have much to do because their state’s going to go blue regardless,” she said. “So they support candidates in states like Georgia or Texas.”

Democrats tended to rely more on outside funds because of weaker local funding systems in competitive states such as Ohio and Michigan. They built a grassroots fundraising system around ActBlue, which launched in 2004, nearly 15 years before Republicans launched WinRed in 2019. Related NPR coverage noted that Democrats had taken the lead while Republicans were catching up, and separately reported that Republicans were spending millions while still potentially failing to win districts drawn to favor them.

Some of the Democratic advantage in out-of-state fundraising was attributed to Republican incumbents’ connections to local funding, while another part reflected the Democratic Party’s diverse base of voters. Brandeis University’s Zachary Albert said Democrats must assemble a diverse coalition around discrete policies that claim to represent particular groups rather than one unified ideological agenda. “You’re having to bring together that diverse coalition, not necessarily around some unified ideological agenda, but based on a kind of discrete policy [that] claims to represent particular groups,” Albert said.

Republicans were initially slow to recognize the potential of small-dollar fundraising until Trump. “The Republicans realized, especially during Trump, that they do have a national audience of small donors ready to activate behind their preferred candidates for their preferred agenda,” Public Agenda’s Sarah Bryner said.

Some states have tried to limit outside money, and Hawaii is set to cap out-of-state donations starting in 2027. University of Massachusetts political science professor Raymond La Raja said national regulation is difficult because of Supreme Court precedent. “It’s going to be hard to do constitutionally, especially because the Supreme Court has ruled you can’t prevent groups from spending as much money as they want in elections,” he said.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of coordinated campaign spending, allowing more out-of-state money to be spent in elections; NPR’s related coverage described the ruling as striking down limits on political party spending. As of NPR’s Oct. 28 report, the National Republican Senatorial Committee had spent three times as much on advertisements as in the previous midterms. La Raja suggested public matching funds for local donations, using New York City as a model, saying the approach could shift candidates toward issues in their constituencies rather than national ones.

Bryner pointed to Alaska’s top-donor disclosure law, which requires ads to list the top three donors, as another way to localize fundraising. Colorado and Virginia have similar laws governing online and broadcast ads.

Bryner said funding can influence how a candidate talks about their race locally and nationally, but she was not convinced outside fundraising would completely determine the outcome. She cited Amy McGrath, who ran against Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, and Beto O’Rourke, who ran against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, as candidates who had outraised with out-of-state funds but often lost to those opponents. Bryner advises against appealing to donors outside a state because, ultimately, that money does not translate into votes. “As much as money in politics is such a factor in America, voters are still ultimately who makes the final decision,” Bryner said. “And if you’re getting all your money from outside of the state, those people can’t vote for you.”