The Indicator from Planet Money - How did political campaigns get so expensive?

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

The 2026 midterm elections are fast approaching, and it’s gearing up to be the most expensive election in American history. So how did we get here, where every election feels more expensive than the last? Today on the show, we’re exploring what’s causing the flood of money into our politics. Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.Your Next Listen –Bad economics, smart politics –Over 2,000 episodes in our archive on the NPR AppConnect with The Indicator from Planet Money–The Indicator newsletter — a weekly roundup of news, ideas and staff picks. –Instagram, TikTok and YouTube –Find the Planet Money book –Find the Planet Money game, Sell Me A Sasquatch, and other merch at the NPR Shop!Support public media by subscribing to NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. Next month's midterm elections could be the most expensive in history. Billionaires are largely to blame. I saw this week that Elon Musk told the New York Times he's given Republican groups almost $300 million since July. I guess that buys a lot of attack ads. But Republicans already had a big spending advantage. By some estimates, they've raised almost twice as much as Democrats for the midterms.

And yet, despite all this money, things aren't looking good for the Republicans. if you trust the polls, of course. Right, but also prediction markets like Kalshi and Polly Market, they think the Democrats are going to win. This wouldn't be the first time that money doesn't win big. Case in point, Vice President Kamala Harris far outspent President Trump two years ago. And, well, we know how that turned out. Are you saying billionaires can't actually buy elections?

Shockingly, it does seem like their money can't actually buy everything. But that's still not stopping people or corporations from spending more and more of it on U.S. politics. This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong, joined by journalist and friend of the show, Maria Aspen. Welcome back to the indicator, Maria. Thank you, Waylon. It's great to be here. And over the next three weeks, I'll be joining you to look into how money is shaping next month's midterms. Today, money doesn't always win elections. So what else does it do? Adam Bonica has spent more than 15 years digging into the data of how money shapes U.S. elections. He's a political science professor at Stanford, and he says that this is a pretty negative part of American exceptionalism. It's pretty rare for established democracies to have money in the political system be a this important and be this pervasive.

and C, were politicians to be so obsessed about it. So how did we get here? A lot started with Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that erased the limits on independent corporate spending in elections. But Adam says the problems began way earlier, like decades earlier. It's hard not to look at Buckley v. V.

Lehow, which was a Supreme Court decision that was decided in 1970s, that had set out the legal precedent that money is more or less equivalent to speech. That has allowed wealthy individuals to basically be able to give as much as they want into the system. Adam is not alone in blaming the Supreme Court. Trevor Potter is a Republican and the former head of the Federal Election Commission. He points out that none of the current Supreme Court justices have ever run for public office.

And he says that's part of a bigger problem. It's been a combination of a Supreme Court, which I think increasingly doesn't understand how elections work and a commission which does not enforce existing laws and a deadlocked Congress that has been unable to change the laws and clarify them. So all of those together has resulted in a kind of wild west of non-disclosure and enormous sums. being spent in elections. Today, Trevor runs a nonpartisan nonprofit called the Campaign Legal Center. But in the early 2000s, he advised the late Republican Senator John McCain on his two presidential campaigns, including when he ran in 2008 against then-Senator Barack Obama. And here's where Obama is also partly to blame for where we are today. For decades, presidential campaigns have been partially funded by the U.S. government, which put limits on spending.

But in 2008, Obama was raising a ton of outside money, and so he became the first major party candidate to reject public funding. That obviously worked out for former President Obama. But it seemed to set a precedent. The next presidential election, neither candidate took public funding. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court lifted even more barriers with Citizens United, and then spending really started to get out of control, despite some mixed results. Yeah, we saw pretty quickly that money didn't always. guarantee victory, at least in the Electoral College. Back in 2016, Hillary Clinton outraised Donald Trump in the election that first sent Trump to the Oval Office. What is that saying about doing the same

thing over and over again and still expecting different results? Mm-hmm. Doesn't seem to apply to Democrats spending gobs of money to try to win against Trump, though. But back at Stanford, Adam points out that having money does make a difference at every step along the way. That starts with who can even afford to run for office. It's part of the reason why we see, say, so few working-class candidates in Congress, so few young people in Congress, and so many millionaires or lawyers who happen to be a group that is really good at fundraising for each other. It's shaping what Congress looks like before we ever get a chance to vote. Being able to fundraise also helps candidates get more internal support from their parties and helps get their message out ahead of the primaries that determine who's actually going to run in the general election. And if you win your primary, suddenly you have to get your message out to everyone.

We're seeing that right now with ads supporting some candidates and attacking their opponents, plus all the calls and emails and tax messages trying to turn out voters. This is where Trevor says money does matter in general elections. You have to be able to communicate to voters. They have to hear your message in order to decide whether to vote and whether they're going to vote for you or not. It doesn't guarantee results. But without it, you are not going to have a chance. Just want to say to a candidate, you know who you are.

I have heard your message. You can stop texting me. Heard your message so many times. This entire episode is directed at you. Exactly. It's personal. And it's not just individual candidates trying to get the message out. It's billionaires who don't want more taxes, or it's crypto and AI companies who want to make sure that the people elected are friendly to their industries.

This is dark money's time. Time to shine. Because Citizens United didn't just lift the limits on how much corporations and other special interests can spend. It also lets them do it in secret. Or at least without being upfront about why they're supporting a candidate. Remember the crypto companies who poured money into the 2024 elections? Some of the ads they bought didn't even mention crypto. They just attacked candidates the industry didn't like. Trevor worries that even if this kind of spending doesn't always guarantee victory, it's still warping the way our political. system works. I think the longer-term effects are a weakening of our democracy and a more corrupt government. That is what we're seeing today with these large contributions from the industries that want action out of this administration or don't want any action and want to make sure they

don't get it. Today, neither political party wants to be the first to back down and stop this campaign finance arms race. But Adam is hoping that eventually, somewhere, cooler heads. will prevail. My optimistic hope is that we see self-reform within the parties, and that's then rewarded by voters. The alternative is just a death spiral. A death spiral. Maria, we cannot end the episode of Death Spiral. Tell me out here. No, there are some people working on solutions, and we're actually going to talk to some of them over the next two weeks. And we'll also dig more into the dark money status quo. So stay tuned. This episode was produced. by Corey Bridges with engineering by Sina Lafredo.

As fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Canaan is our editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR.