Who is paying for the 2026 midterms
Al Jazeera's AJLabs published a ranking of the 50 biggest donors and organisations in the 2026 cycle, totalling $2.77bn. We checked every entry against Federal Election Commission filings, then widened the view to candidates, party committees, super PACs and dark money.
Every number carries one label. SOURCED = from a published source (linked). LIVE = pulled from the FEC API on the as-of date. ANALYST = Catalyst calculation, method stated. GAP = we do not have reliable data and show none.
a. The top 50, checked against FEC filings
Each cell is one donor or organisation from the Al Jazeera list. Cell area is the amount. Toggle to compare their figures with what we can find in itemised FEC receipts.
The validated circle is smaller: about against Al Jazeera's $2.77bn. The gap is mostly not an error on their side. Some donors give through vehicles that are not itemised under their own names: LLCs, trusts and direct independent spending. Some groups are 501(c)(4) nonprofits, whose totals come from spending, not from donations.
Al Jazeera figures: SOURCED AJLabs, Oct 26 2026. Catalyst figures: LIVE FEC Schedule A, 2025–26.
b. Validation table
VERIFIED FEC itemised total within ±10% of Al Jazeera's figure.
CORRECTED FEC supports 50–90% of the figure, or exceeds it by more than 10%. We show the FEC number.
UNVERIFIED FEC itemised receipts support less than half of the figure. That does not mean the figure is wrong. It means we could not trace it in filings.
Click a column heading to sort it. Each row links to its FEC query.
c. Where the money goes
Candidate committees, the six national party committees, independent spending by the 24 largest outside groups, and the traceable dark-money flows from the top-50 nonprofits. These categories overlap: money a nonprofit gives a super PAC is counted in both. Read them side by side, not as one total.
Democratic candidates out-raised Republicans. Republican-aligned super PACs and party committees out-spent their Democratic counterparts.
LIVE FEC candidate aggregates, committee totals and the /totals/O independent-expenditure ranking. Alignment (ANALYST) is based on which candidates each group spent for or against.
d. Follow the money: donors → groups
The 16 largest validated donors, linked to their three largest recipient committees where the flow is at least $3M. This is FEC-itemised money only.
Where super PACs spend it, by race, is shown in the race table below. Money that moves through 501(c)(4)s before reaching a super PAC appears here as coming from the nonprofit. The original donors are not disclosed.
LIVE FEC Schedule A, 2025–26.
e. How dark is the money?
Of the $1.87bn in independent expenditures by the top 100 outside spenders, at least traces back to 501(c) nonprofits that do not disclose their donors. The real figure is higher. Nonprofits also spend directly on "issue" ads that are never reported to the FEC, and smaller c4 transfers fall below our list.
Notable: One Nation gave $70.7M to the Senate Leadership Fund. Majority Forward gave $61M to Senate Majority PAC. House Majority Forward gave $93.7M to House Majority PAC. American Action Network gave $64.3M to the Congressional Leadership Fund.
LIVE FEC Schedule A (receipts from those nonprofits). The share is an ANALYST lower bound. The rest is a GAP.
f. Industries
We grouped the top 50 by the main source of the donor's wealth or the group's mission, using validated FEC figures. Crypto is the clearest single-industry block: Coinbase and Ripple gave mainly to Fairshake. Foris DAX, the company behind Crypto.com, gave mainly to MAGA Inc. AI and tech money runs through Leading the Future and others. Sports betting runs largely through one super PAC, Win for America.
Categories: ANALYST. Amounts: LIVE FEC.
g. Money in our key races
Candidate receipts and cash on hand for the top two candidates in each race, from their latest FEC reports. Outside money is independent expenditures reported for or against those candidates. Click a race to open its Catalyst race report.
Ohio Senate draws the most outside money of our key races, at about $150M. Texas Senate has the largest candidate war chest: Talarico has raised $146M.
LIVE FEC /elections and Schedule E. Ad-spending totals from AdImpact are not included (GAP).
h. Concentration: 50 donors vs everyone else
The validated top 50 account for . That is comparable to everything all House and Senate candidates raised from itemised individual donors combined.
Candidate money not itemised by individuals or committees is mostly small gifts under $200 and candidate self-funding. FEC aggregates do not split these, so we label the bar "unitemised and other".
LIVE FEC aggregates. Comparison: ANALYST.
Self-funders
Georgia's Republican nominee for governor, Rick Jackson, has put more than $200M of his own fortune into his campaign. SOURCED AJC, Oct 28 2026. That would put him in the top tier of the Al Jazeera list, but state races file with the state, not the FEC.
Methodology
FEC data was pulled from api.open.fec.gov on 2026-10-28 for the 2025–26 cycle. For each of Al Jazeera's 50 entries, we searched Schedule A receipts by contributor name, including spouses and known name variants. We removed duplicates by transaction ID, dropped memo entries to avoid double counting, and excluded clear mismatches (for example "Oneida Indian Nation" for One Nation). Alignment means where the money went: the party of the candidates a recipient super PAC supported, or the party it opposed. Gambling, crypto, AIPAC and realtor money that went to both sides, or to single-issue groups, is shown in grey. Figures round to $0.1M. FEC filings lag: the latest reports cover activity through Oct 14 (pre-general), so later money is missing.
What we couldn't verify
Comparison source: Al Jazeera / AJLabs, "Tracking the money: The biggest donors in the 2026 US midterm elections". We built our own visualisations from our own data and did not reproduce theirs.