Well, now. The 2025-2026 Election Cycle is officially over, and while some races haven't been decided yet and others are already heading into litigation, recounts and so forth, overall it was a spectacularly successful election for Democrats up and down the ballot and around the country!
With that in mind, my final analysis of the Blue26.org Dem fundraising project will be a lot more detailed than the usual monthly updates have been....so strap in, because it's gonna get wonky.
I should give shout-outs before I start to the excellent data wonks over at State Navigate, Dave's Redistricting and Ballotpedia, whose work has been invaluable in helping put together my various fundraising pages...as well as to The Downballot (and Ballotpedia) for helping me fill in some of the election result columns in the tables below.
OK, first up, the topline numbers:
Over the course of the full 2-year election cycle (11/06/2024 - 11/03/2026), I raised well over $2.13 MILLION for Democrats around the country..or 62% more than I did over the 2022 election cycle ($1.32 million):
Here's the topline breakout:
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U.S. Senate: $524,724 (24.6%)
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U.S. House: $436,195 (20.4%)
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State Legislative: $809,127 (37.9%)
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State Executives*: $187,235 (8.8%)
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Courts: $64,332 (3.0%)
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State Dem Parties: $109,119 (5.1%)
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Local/Other: $5,425 (0.3%)
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TOTAL: $2,136,157
*NOTE: State Executives includes Governors, Lt. Governors, Attorneys General & Secretaries of State as well as other state executive office such as Treasurers, Auditors, Comptrollers, Public Service Commissioners, School Boards, etc.
The ~$2.13 million consists of over 178,000 individual donations averaging just $11.97 apiece (admittedly, most of those were in the form of larger donations split among multiple candidates).
It's gone directly to over 3,300 different Democratic candidates (along with several dozen state & local parties), averaging around $636 apiece:
- 587 candidates received $1 - $10 apiece
- 493 received $10 - $25 apiece
- 342 have received $10 - $50 apiece
- 371 have received $50 - $100 apiece
- 419 have received $100 - $250 apiece
- 403 have received $250 - $500 apiece
- 258 have received $500 - $1,000 apiece
- 292 have received $1,000 - $2,500 apiece
- 105 have received $2,500 - $5,000 apiece
- 59 have received $5,000 - $10,000 apiece
- 20 have received $10,000 - $25,000 apiece
- 7 have received more than $25,000
OK, now it's time to dig into the details:
U.S. SENATE RACES:
- The ten Top Tier Races averaged ~$32.7K apiece
- The six 2nd Tier Races averaged ~$20.0K apiece
- The ten 3rd Tier Races average ~$5.7K apiece, although it's actually ~$6.3K apiece since Todd Achilles (Idaho) didn't use ActBlue for online fundraising so I couldn't raise anything for him.
- There was also another ~$11.8K donated to various candidates who either dropped out or lost their primaries, and another ~$8K to candidates who weren't even running this cycle (this is due to donors who have recurring monthly donations set up from prior cycles).
STATE SUPREME COURT RACES:
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to raise money for most of the Democratic (or liberal/Dem-appointed) judicial candidates for several reasons: In some cases there were no Dem/liberal candidates to begin with; in other cases these were "retention" races for Republican/conservative incumbents; and in still others it was because a lot of judicial candidates either choose not to use ActBlue due to its inherently partisan branding, or aren't allowed to do so under state campaign finance law.
Overall, I raised over $64,000 for 15 judicial candidates, although two of these are really carryovers from the 2024 cycle (in NC, Justice Allison Riggs went through an absurdly lengthy recount/legal process which bled over well into 2025). If you only include the other 13 races it averaged ~$4,800 per candidate.
GOVERNORS / LT. GOVERNORS:
(For most statewide races I'm listing every state on the ballot this cycle even if I didn't actually raise money for the Democratic candidate due to it being a deep blue state. I'm doing this for U.S. Senate, State Supreme Court, Gov/Lt. Govs and Attys General/Secs of State.)
I raised a total of over $98,000 for 48 gubernatorial & lt. gubernatorial candidates...but again, when you disregard candidates who dropped out of the primary, retired or didn't even run this cycle, it was actually 36 candidates, plus the DGA (Dem Govs Assn) and DLGA (Dem Lt. Govs Assn), which breaks out to more like ~$2,500 apiece.
ATTORNEYS GENERAL / SECRETARIES OF STATE:
Over $33K for Dem Attorneys General candidates plus another $31K for Secretaries of State nominees equals $64.3K total.
Again, technically more than 50 candidates received some donations, but when you restrict it to candidates actually on the November ballot who received more than a nominal amount ($1 in some cases), it's 35 of them, plus the DAGA (Dem. AG Assn) and DASS (Dem. Assn of Secs. of State). That breaks out to roughly $1,700 apiece.
OTHER STATE EXECUTIVES:
For these, I'm only including the races where I actually listed them on my fundraising page since there's all sorts of edge cases which would have taken forever to track down. This includes an assortment of Commissioners, Councilmembers, Auditors, Treasurers and so forth depending on the state.
The black cells mean that I wasn't able to actually raise money for the candidate directly due to them not using ActBlue as their fundraising platform, although in mosts cases I included a text link to whatever platform they used instead.
$11,300 total for 54 candidates, averaging around $210 apiece. Clearly donors aren't exactly lining up to ensure that the Kansas Insurance Commissioner seat is in Democratic hands. Then again, in a wave election like this one, interesting things can happen downballot, as you can clearly see in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and especially Texas!
EDUCATION OFFICES:
This includes both state Superintendents as well as Boards of Education members and Boards of Trustees.
Again, not a whole lot of donor love for these offices, but I was able to raise about $13.4K for 42 candidates, averaging $318 apiece.
OK, that's it for Part 1.
In Part 2 (which I hope to post tomorrow), I'll be posting a detailed breakout of what I raised for State Democratic Parties, over 2,500 (!) State Legislative candidates and, of course, hundreds of U.S. House candidates!
Stay tuned, and remember, if you found this project to be useful and want to support my efforts for the 2028 Presidential election cycle, you can throw a tip my way here, thank you!
