The Texas Senate Race Is Now the Costliest Non-Presidential Contest in American History: $573 Million in Ads, and One Day to Go
AdImpact's count — $165.7 million in the primaries, $407.5 million in the general — sets the record the Paxton–Talarico race carries into Election Day, with the final polls split between a seven-point lead and a two-point race.
The Texas Senate race between Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico has become the most expensive non-presidential race in American electoral history. Advertising intelligence firm AdImpact put political advertising spending and reservations at a record $573 million, reported Monday: $165.7 million spent in the primaries, followed by $407.5 million in general-election spending and reservations. A single group spent $182.1 million on advertisements supporting Paxton and attacking Talarico — the eighth-highest-spending advertiser in the entire election cycle, on the Kalshi News account of the same AdImpact figures, which cited a CBS Texas total of approximately $544.5 million including the primaries, with Republicans spending about $274 million on general-election ads for Paxton against $133 million by Democrats for Talarico. The two totals count reservations differently; both describe the same record scale.
The money has bought a close race, not a settled one. The final New York Times/Siena survey, of 1,215 voters, found Talarico ahead 50 percent to 43 percent, while the RealClearPolitics average showed a much narrower 1.8-point gap — Talarico 48.8 percent to Paxton's 47 percent. Among Hispanic voters, the Decision Desk HQ average reported by NewsNation put Talarico at 54.8 percent to Paxton's 32.1 percent, while a University of Houston poll found Paxton leading among rural Hispanics 56 percent to 24 percent — the split that has defined the race's closing weeks in Dallas and Tarrant Counties as much as anywhere. Prediction-market traders on Kalshi priced Talarico's chance at 75 percent on Monday; those prices are a market, not a count, and Tuesday's turnout is the only figure that settles it.
The history on the ballot is the reason the record was set here. Texas has not elected a Democrat to the United States Senate since 1988, and Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats nationally to take the chamber — arithmetic that makes a competitive Texas race worth more to both parties than any non-presidential contest before it. By Monday the spending is done being a forecast: the ads are placed, the early vote is banked, and what $573 million could not buy either campaign is the Election Day turnout in counties like Dallas and Tarrant, where the Metroplex's share of that record race will be decided between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Tuesday.
