Some candidates attract a great deal of outside spending as various interests attempt to help or harm their election bids; others, not so much. Furthermore, some waves of spending come during the primary elections, and others don't hit until the general. Outside interest groups have a wide range of vehicles at their disposal to use for independent expenditures, electioneering communications and communication costs in contested races-- including super PACs, which may raise unlimited sums from almost any source and use the funds for ads that overtly advocate for or against a candidate. Special interest groups may also seek to influence voters through 501(c) nonprofit operations; these aren't primarily supposed to be involved in politics, but some appear to find ways to skirt the restriction. These nonprofit operations, as well as other kinds of committees known as 527 groups, both register with the IRS.

Why don't the numbers add up?

Based on data released by the FEC on Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Only candidates with at least $1,000 in outside spending are included.

Candidate totals on this page cannot be added together to obtain an overall total spent for the cycle. This is because some outside groups do not report spending per candidate. For the electioneering communications, for example, several candidates can be listed on a report with no indication of how the money should be distributed among the candidates, or even if the money is being spent for or against the candidates. In such cases, the "Total" column will reflect the full amount reported for the expenditure for each candidate. For instance, if a group spends $100,000 on an electioneering communication that mentions three candidates, all three candidates will show $100,000 for that expenditure.

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