Nathan Stanford desk / OSINT notes

Two public datasets tell the same story from different altitudes: candidate committees have already cleared the billion-dollar mark for the 2026 cycle, and independent expenditure machines are carpet-bombing Senate battlegrounds with opposition ads.

Official FEC 15-month baseline

The Federal Election Commission’s Statistical Summary of 15-Month Campaign Activity (covering Jan. 1, 2025–March 31, 2026; released July 9, 2026) reports:

  • Congressional candidates: $2.127 billion raised, $1.345 billion spent; $1.359 billion cash-on-hand; 2,504 candidate committees with activity.
  • Party committees: $1.121 billion raised, $824.8 million spent.
  • PACs: $6.300 billion raised, $4.784 billion spent; $3.063 billion cash-on-hand across 8,816 PACs.
  • Independent expenditures (same window): $252.1 million in reported IE disbursements.

Chamber split inside that congressional total: Senate candidates (291) raised $654 million; House candidates (2,213) raised $1.5 billion.

Live IE tracker: the post-March surge

A public FEC Schedule E aggregator at PollingSource’s 2026 Outside Spending dashboard (figures observed Sept. 17, 2026) shows cycle IE spending far above the FEC’s March cutoff:

  • Total IE spending: about $480.7 million
  • Support vs. oppose: ~$232.4 million supporting / ~$248.3 million opposing
  • Committees / races: 395 committees touching 122 races

Top spenders on that dashboard snapshot included Americans for Prosperity Action (~$23.2 million), United Democracy Project (~$22.4 million, almost entirely oppose), and No Going Back PAC (~$19.7 million). The three largest races by IE volume: Kentucky Senate (~$38.6 million), Ohio Senate (~$36.6 million), and Michigan Senate (~$34.9 million).

How to use this as OSINT

Treat the FEC summary as the audited baseline through Q1 2026 and the Schedule E tracker as a near-real-time radar for 24/48-hour notices. When a single oppose buy clears multi-million territory in Ohio or Michigan, the next step is always the same: open the committee’s Form 24/Schedule E, note the payee and media market, then walk upstream to the committee’s largest donors — including any dark-money nonprofit transfers covered in parallel reporting.

Sourcing note: FEC figures from the Commission’s July 9, 2026 statistical summary page. Live IE totals and race rankings from PollingSource’s public FEC Schedule E dashboard as retrieved Sept. 17, 2026; those tracker totals move as new notices post.