Who is paying for the ads in every competitive congressional race
Every super PAC, party and interest-group dollar reported to the Federal Election Commission for or against a 2026 House or Senate candidate, re-added from the original filings, sorted by race, matched to the ads it bought, and set beside what independent fact-checkers found when they looked at those ads.
Where the money is going
Each state is shaded by total outside spending in its House and Senate races. Click a state to filter the race list below.
Week by week
Independent expenditures by the week the ad or mailer went out, split by the party it helps. Bars are reported amounts, including estimates filed on 24- and 48-hour notices.
What the money buys
Purpose field of each expenditure, grouped. "Media buy" covers placements that don't name a medium.
All races with outside spending
Sorted by total outside spending. Pro-Democratic and pro-Republican totals count money supporting a party's nominee or opposing the other side's. Click a race for the full breakdown.
The groups behind the ads
Forty committees account for most of the outside money in 2026. Super PACs can raise unlimited sums; party committees are the national campaign arms; "other" covers traditional PACs, unions, trade associations and nonprofits that report their spending.
What fact-checkers found when they watched the ads
Published checks of 2026 House and Senate ads by PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, CNN, Snopes and local newsrooms (TV "Truth Test" and newspaper "Ad Watch" columns), matched to the race and the group that paid for the ad. Every verdict links to the original article; the rating is the outlet's own. Surveyed for the 35 races with the most outside spending; a race with no entry had no published check found, not necessarily clean ads.
Where the numbers come from, and how they were checked
Automated checks on this build
Glossary
Built by Arun Das
Senior at Byram Hills High School in Armonk, New York. Founder of Envira. Data Mobilizer at ActBlue.
Why I built this
In the last weeks before an election, most of what voters see about a congressional race is paid advertising, and most of that money does not come from the candidates. It comes from super PACs, party committees and interest groups whose names appear for a second at the end of a 30-second spot. The filings that say who they are, how much they spent and which ad it bought are all public at the Federal Election Commission. They are just hard to read.
This site puts those filings in one place: every reported dollar spent for or against a 2026 House or Senate candidate, re-added from the original line items, matched to the ads it paid for, and set beside what independent fact-checkers found when they watched those ads. Every number links back to the FEC document it came from, so you never have to take my word for it.
The rules are simple. Nothing here is a forecast. Spending shows where groups are placing bets, not who is going to win. Fact-check ratings are the outlets' own, not mine. And if a total does not reconcile with its line items, it does not get published.
Who I am
I am a senior at Byram Hills High School in Armonk, New York, interested in how public data can be turned into tools people actually use: for voters, for town officials, for communities that bear the cost of decisions made far away. I work as a Data Mobilizer at ActBlue, and I founded Envira, a climate finance research initiative.
Other projects
- Envira — a climate finance research initiative building analytical frameworks and tools for low- and middle-income countries, with the aim of connecting global climate policy to the communities it affects. Projects include carbon arbitrage analytics, decarbonization policy frameworks, landfill emissions dashboards, climate-tech network mapping and a ward-level dashboard for the Kolkata Climate Action Plan.
- FORESIGHT — a fiscal projection tool for the Town of North Castle, adopted by the Town Board for multi-year budget planning.
- STEWARD — a fiscal transparency dashboard for North Castle that tracks municipal finances and capital projects for residents and town officials.
- AI infrastructure — research on resource planning for the AI data center buildout: where capacity is being sited, what it needs from the grid, and how to reason about the trade-offs.
Get in touch
The code and data are open on GitHub. If you spot an error, a missing fact check or an ad that deserves a closer look, open an issue there.
This site, by the numbers
Credits
Arun Das
Federal Election Commission filings, assembled by the open-source Follow the Money 2026 pipeline
PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, CNN, Snopes and the local newsrooms linked on each item