$2 Billion From 20 Top Donors Fuels a Hugely Expensive Midterms

An updated Times analysis reveals the outsize role that megadonors like Elon Musk are playing in this election, and where the money is going.

At the end of a campaign, the cash really starts flowing.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have flooded the political system since August, when The New York Times last ranked the top 20 donors in the midterms. Our new ranking, analyzing contributions made through the most recent filing deadline in mid-October, shows that the updated top 20 have pumped roughly $2 billion into federal races this cycle.

These megadonors are playing an outsize role in the most expensive midterm election, as measured in political advertising, since at least the 2018 cycle, according to data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm. Their $2 billion will fund a range of campaign operations, but to put the amount into perspective, it's equivalent to roughly 15 percent of all the money that will be spent on ads this cycle, according to AdImpact.

Three new megadonors, all Democrats, cracked the updated list. But as was true this summer, there is a strong Republican- and tech-oriented tilt to the biggest spenders.

The political headwinds facing the Republican Party, including the unpopular war with Iran and high consumer prices, have only gotten more intense in recent months. So the party is to some extent hoping its advantage with tech billionaires and other Republican mega-contributors will help blunt those challenges.

Some of these top 20 donors are grouped together because of close familial or business relationships. Here is the Times list:

The Times divides the donor list into four categories. The first two are driven by their ties to the tech or crypto industries. The other categories are nonprofits or longtime partisan donors.

Here's a breakdown of the contributors and their motivations.

There is no donor whose spending rivals that of Elon Musk. He has contributed nearly three times as much as the next closest donor, rocketing to the top of the Times list. Mr. Musk's total excludes tens of millions of dollars, including money given after Oct. 14 or to entities that do not file through the Federal Election Commission.

Over the last few months, Mr. Musk has spent more than $200 million to help elect Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, to the Senate, including by standing up an extensive field campaign in the state. Other donations from Mr. Musk have gone to support political groups active in Kentucky and Alaska elections.

Mr. Musk is a leading example of the tech industry's embrace of the Trump administration. The venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz makes this list as a leading donor to both Fairshake, a pro-crypto super PAC, and Leading the Future, the super PAC pushing for A.I.-friendly legislation.

The OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, are also the second main backers of Leading the Future, but the couple has since distanced themselves from the group.

A liberal counterweight to all of that, the tech investor Reid Hoffman, is new to this list. About 40 percent of Mr. Hoffman's donations, $16.5 million, have gone to backing Mr. Paxton's Democratic opponent, James Talarico, symbolic of a simmering feud between Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Musk in Silicon Valley.

The cryptocurrency industry has been one of the biggest spenders in the final weeks of the midterms. That's primarily because the industry's billionaires and companies were rattled in September by the defeat of a policy bill it favored.

Alongside Andreessen Horowitz, Ripple and Coinbase are the other two anchor donors to Fairshake, which has now spent about $46 million to try to prevent Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, from returning to the Senate. (Ripple's executive chairman, Chris Larsen, is also a major midterm donor, largely to support Democrats.)

Also spending against Mr. Brown are the Winklevoss brothers, who are tightly linked to President Trump through their super PAC, the Digital Freedom Fund.

The biggest donors in political campaigns are increasingly nonprofits that don't disclose their funding sources.

The super PACs behind Democrats in the House and Senate are funded heavily by House Majority Forward and Majority Forward respectively. The same goes for the principal two super PACs behind Capitol Hill Republicans, which are funded by their sibling nonprofit groups, One Nation and American Action Network.

All four of those nonprofits moved up spots on this ranking thanks to millions of dollars in new donations.

The American Prosperity Alliance continued its role as the main funder of a Republican super PAC that spent money in various Democratic primary elections in an attempt to produce weaker opponents for Republicans in the fall.

One entirely new group has joined The Times's list since the summer: the Economic Opportunity Fund, which donated $35 million in September and October alone to Democratic super PACs. The dark-money nonprofit, formed in 2024, says its work is to "support advocates, workers and policy experts dedicated to broadening economic opportunity for all Americans."

It held less than $1 million on hand as of mid-2025, according to its most recent tax return, suggesting that the nonprofit recently came into many millions.

These are the ol' reliables of the party system who cut big checks to the Democratic and Republican candidates year after year.

You'll find familiar Republican names here: The pro-Israel donors Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer backed G.O.P. leadership super PACs this midterms, as they do cycle after cycle; more libertarian-minded donors like Jeff Yass and the company Koch are crucial to the Republican money machine, with the company investing heavily in the Republican field operation.

Richard and Liz Uihlein, a libertarian-leaning couple, have come on particularly strong at the end of the midterms, making last-minute hefty donations to prop up the G.O.P. and lifting their total to about $150 million.

Two New York Democratic donors are equally reliable. One is the Soros family. They are left-wing mainstays, but their two family-run super PACs still sat on about $173 million as of mid-October. They did not appear in any rush to spend.

The other is Michael R. Bloomberg, a former Republican who is now the white knight for the Democratic Party, performing his trademark move of investing tens of millions of dollars at the end of the campaign. Most of Mr. Bloomberg's donations in the midterms came in the final two months, shooting him up high on this list after not appearing at all on the last one.