What was the most expensive senate race in 2012 and how much was spent?

Totaling more than $111,000,000.00, the 2014 North Carolina Senate contest between Kay Hagan and Thom Tillis is the most expensive Senate election in the nation’s history (not adjusted for inflation). As we investigated earlier this week, outside money has been flowing into American politics in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010.

When candidate and independent spending are combined, 2014 ranks among the most expensive, if not the most expensive, in history. However, understanding campaign spending takes more than a simple examination of total dollars. Spending differences across states can occur for a variety of reasons, including geographic size, population size, and the expense of media markets.

As a result, a more useful metric for understanding the magnitude of campaign activity is spending per voter, and 2014 offers an interesting case: Alaska. This year, Alaska saw a highly competitive Senate race in which both outside groups and candidates spend substantial amounts of money. Alaska ranks 47th in population with just over 700,000 residents and an estimated 503,000 eligible voters. After adjusting spending (both candidate and independent expenditures) for each state’s estimated voting eligible population, Alaska’s 2014 Senate race, unsurprisingly, ranks as the most expensive in US history.

Alaska originally ranked 6th most expensive in 2014, with about $60 million spent total. But it jumps to first place in dollars spent per voter. Candidates and outside groups spent roughly $120 per voter in Alaska this year, about double the next most-expensive race, Montana 2012, where candidates and outside groups spent $66.5 per voter. By comparison, the $111 million Senate race in North Carolina—with a voting-eligible population of about 6,826,610—equaled only $16.25 per voter. That’s still far above the median spending per race for all three cycles ($7.3 per voter) but certainly serves to put the spending in context.

Relative to 2012 and 2014, in terms of both combined and per-voter spending, 2010 could be considered one of the cheaper cycles for Senate races thus far.

These data lend some support to the observation that, since Citizens (and more recently McCutcheon v. FEC) independent expenditures are quickly outpacing contributions to candidates. But given changes in reporting requirements and limited data, there is still a lot about outside spending we still don’t know.

All in all, candidate and outside group spending totaled just over a billion dollars in Senate races in 2014. The fact that North Carolina alone accounted for more than ten percent of that spending is astonishing, but no less remarkable is the intensity of spending per voter in Alaska. But if spending continues to grow as it has the last three election cycles, both of those records will likely be shattered in 2016.

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The battle for control of the U.S. Senate has been expensive; no place more so than Ohio. Outside groups have spent more tens of millions dollars on the seat.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block.

Ahead of tomorrow's big election, both candidates are making stop after stop in the battleground state of Ohio. But we're not talking about the presidential race. We're going to focus now on the battle for control of the U.S. Senate. And the race in Ohio between incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Josh Mandel is turning out to be one of the most expensive contests. As NPR's Sonari Glinton reports, tens of millions of dollars in outside money have poured into the race.

SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: When you meet Ohio's State Treasurer Josh Mandel, you're struck by how young he looks. He jokes about it warming up the crowd at a rotary luncheon in Cincinnati.

JOSH MANDEL: I try to keep my personal goals relatively simple. By the time I'm 36, I just hope to be shaving.

(LAUGHTER)

MANDEL: I heard some people whispering, how old is this guy? So...

GLINTON: Mandel is 35, but by his own admission, he looks 19. The former Marine's youthful looks belie a prodigious fundraiser and a favorite of many on the right of the Republican Party. Despite riding a Republican wave into office as state treasurer in 2010, Mandel says this time he's the underdog.

MANDEL: We think we're sitting in a good spot to win this thing on Tuesday. I mean, when we started this campaign off, it was sort of a David-versus-Goliath-type fight. I mean, no one really gave us a shot because, you know, I'm running against a guy who's been running for political office since Richard Nixon was president. He's been in Washington for two decades. But we're doing it.

GLINTON: Mandel has made headway. He's pulled within a few points of incumbent Sherrod Brown.

DAVID COHEN: The fact is when this race started a couple years ago, nobody expected it to be competitive at all.

GLINTON: David Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Akron, says money, not Mandel, has changed this race.

COHEN: I should say there's a reason that the race is as close as it is, and that's the fact that, you know, a lot of outside groups have gotten into this race.

GLINTON: The amount spent from outside Ohio in this race is staggering - $50 million, about $35 million of which is being spent against Brown, though he's been able to maintain a lead. Mandel spent only a third as much on TV as outside groups spent against Brown. Here's Senator Brown speaking at a union hall in the town of Findlay in Northern Ohio.

SENATOR SHERROD BROWN: And it comes from these companies that want to outsource jobs to China because they don't like my legislation to level the playing field and stop China from cheating on currency and enforcing trade laws that end up creating jobs in Findlay, Ohio.

(APPLAUSE)

GLINTON: When asked by reporters, Brown is proud of the amount of money being spent against him.

BROWN: Far more than any state in the country, far more than this state has ever seen, it made this into a race just because they've attacked me with literally 45,000 ads in the last year.

GLINTON: So why so much money in this one race even if doesn't mean a clear defeat of Brown? David Cohen, the political scientist, says part of the reason is that Brown is especially despised by some on the right because of his liberal views. But Cohen says it's also about overall strategy.

COHEN: Ohio is a very important strategic battleground state. And so if you spend money on Josh Mandel's behalf, you know, the theory is its going to benefit Mitt Romney and may help the presidential as well. So you're basically getting more bang for the buck.

GLINTON: The fate of the presidential race and control of the Senate could rest on Ohio and how much bang there was in all those bucks. Sonari Glinton, NPR News.

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