Campaigns & Elections

Candidates and their consultants need to up their advertising game in order to be effective in a media market saturated with spending by outside groups. The recent Supreme Court ruling in the McCutcheon case was expected to tip the balance of spending power back in favor of candidates and national parties.

But a new report from the Wesleyan Media Project shows that ad spending by outside groups is dwarfing candidate output.

In 2014 Senate races, for instance, outside groups are responsible for 59 percent of TV ad airings -- a 64 percentage increase from 2012. The Project estimated that $43.1 million has been spent on broadcast and national cable ads so far, which is a 45-percent jump over ad airings in Senate races at this point in the last cycle.

In some states, the percentage of airings by outside groups is overwhelming. In North Carolina, outside groups sponsored 90 percent of the ads, and groups have sponsored more than three-in-four ads in Michigan, Louisiana, Kentucky and Alaska, according to the report.