Shifting Senate Map Is Fueling Most Expensive US Election Ever

(Bloomberg) -- The political battle for the Senate is spreading to states many analysts doubted would have a central role in the November midterms, prompting both parties to bolster spending in an election that is on track to be the most expensive in American history.

Just 36 days before Election Day, and with voting underway in almost half the country, Democrats are betting that voter frustration with the cost-of-living can outpace the Republican Party's financial arsenal. An estimated $11.6 billion has been spent so far, according to the ad tracking website AdImpact. That's more than was spent during the entire 2024 presidential race.

On the Senate side, this year's midterms initially looked to favor Republicans, given the number of states where Democratic incumbents were both on the ballot and seen as at-risk following President Donald Trump's 2024 election. But recent weeks have seen Democrats leading or making gains in states previously viewed as long shots, including Iowa, Kansas, Alaska, Ohio and even Texas. Democrats need to flip four seats to take a majority.

"As the trend lines start to come into view, they have everybody thinking this is genuinely a toss-up. There are so many close races," says Kevin Madden, a GOP strategist who now advises companies.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates seven Senate races as "toss-ups." Kansas, which hasn't elected a Democratic senator since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration nearly a century ago, is listed as "lean Republican," a stunning shift in a state Trump won two years ago by 16 percentage points.

Republican anxiety about the state of the race nationally has been clear in recent weeks, as GOP lawmakers began pushing back on the administration's failure to resolve the war in Iran, its deportation policies and the cost of living. Those moves came as mortgage rates spiked above 7%, the White House tried to ban several media outlets and Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping for meetings that were heavy on pomp and light on substance.

And while the White House says Trump will begin an intense series of campaign-style rallies for Republicans in the final weeks before the midterms, when he has traveled lately he's mostly visited deep red states and districts. The next two trips on his calendar, the White House said, are Oklahoma and Alabama, states overwhelmingly dominated by the GOP.