$4.15: The national average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline is $4.15 today, according to AAA, making it the highest ever on an Election Day and the highest ever for this date in any year. Gas prices are up almost 40% since the start of the Iran war at the end of February. The national average price for diesel, meanwhile, is about $6.29, down from a record of almost $6.53 in late September, but up from $3.68 a year ago.
$12 billion: Total spending on campaign ads this year is reportedly expected to top $12 billion, helping make this year’s midterm elections the most expensive in U.S. history, exceeding even the 2024 presidential contest.
$2.1 billion: The Republican Party had a massive fundraising advantage in this midterm cycle, as the party and three super PACS affiliated with President Trump and House and Senate GOP leaders reportedly raised more than $2.1 billion in total, according to Bloomberg, far exceeding the roughly $1.4 billion raised by their Democratic counterparts.
Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC reportedly spent over $300 million on the midterms, including more than $277 million over the final weeks of the campaign, Reuters reported last month. Trump himself had announced that he would spend more than $400 million total by Election Day.
And as Republicans scrambled to try to keep control of the House, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House Republican super PAC, announced on Tuesday that it had set records for both fundraising and ad spending in the 2026 election cycle, with $244.8 million spent on advertising across 55 districts, up from more than $242 million spent in 2024. CLF and its affiliated American Action Network raised a combined $370 million.
$474 million: Elon Musk has donated nearly half a billion dollars to political campaigns in this election cycle — more money, The New York Times reports, “than any donor has ever spent in a single election cycle, apart from wealthy candidates who have funded their own runs for office.” The $474 million total includes disclosed donations to federal and state political groups since the beginning of 2025. Musk gave $168 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main Senate Republican super PAC, with almost all of that money going to back Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign in Texas.