Coming To A Political Campaign Near You: Outside Money, And Lots Of It

It's happening in several congressional races, in states like Nebraska, Montana and Ohio — millions of dollars from out-of-state donors and outside groups are fueling candidates' war chests. When did so many Americans decide races outside their backyards were important enough to back financially? “Across the United States, money is pouring into congressional races that comes from outside the congressional district, and there's another thing that's happening at the same time, which is a lot of the money is increasingly coming from donors who identify themselves as strongly partisan," NPR's science correspondent Shankar Vedantam explains.