Senate & House · 2026

Cost per Length

Ring up every dollar working for a candidate — their campaign, outside groups backing them, and outside groups attacking their opponent — and divide by their share in the polls. The priciest point on the shelf: Ken Paxton (R) in Texas Senate, at $5.6M per percentage point.

Senate

House

Chart

Table

Updated Oct 19, 2026, 7:02 PM UTC

Click any mark to see exactly where its number comes from. ★ = incumbent.

Bars show each contender's $ per poll point (D/R/I). Pick a race to see its full breakdown.

★ Cost per Length ★

Texas Senate

U.S. Senate · PVI R+6 · #1 priciest

Data Oct 19, 2026 · 11 pollsters · 39 polls

DJames TalaricoDemocrat

Campaign spending$114,178,604

Outside $ for$17,395,704

Outside $ against Paxton$66,796,495

Subtotal$198,370,803

Poll share48.1%

Price per point$4,123,081

Points above party baseline+6.1

Price per point over baseline$32,332,733

RKen PaxtonRepublican

Campaign spending$14,572,704

Outside $ for$93,771,129

Outside $ against Talarico$152,522,790

Subtotal$260,866,623

Poll share46.7%

Price per point$5,582,174

Points above party baseline−6.1

Below party baseline by−6.1

1 length = 1 point in the polls
Baseline = 2 × PVI + generic ballot (D+7.2)
Correlation ≠ causation. Click any line for its sources.

Limits of this data

Expected margin = 2 × Cook PVI (state/district lean, converted from vote share to margin) + the current generic-ballot average (or, if fewer than 4 pollsters have polled it in the last 60 days, the median of other aggregators' averages). It ignores incumbency and candidate quality on purpose — that's what over/underperformance measures.

Money flows toward competitive races, so spending and polling move together for reasons other than spending working. Treat these as descriptions, not causal estimates.

Candidate totals come from each campaign's most recent filed report; most cover through June 30 or September 30, so recent fundraising is not yet visible.

Outside spending in House special elections is left out of race totals (listed under Exclusions). A candidate who also ran in a 2025–26 House special still has that campaign's own spending in their FEC totals, which cover the whole two-year cycle and can't be split.

Polling data: VoteHub, licensed CC BY 4.0. Campaign finance: Federal Election Commission.