That running for Congress is expensive is hardly a secret. In recent years, a flood of spending from campaigns and outside groups has been aimed at shifting the balance of power on Capitol Hill. As this has happened, though, the Americans those politicians represent have had their incomes stagnate or drop. In 2000, candidates in an average congressional campaign raised about 27.5 times the average household income of the district they hoped to represent. By 2014, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the U.S. Census Bureau, that figure more than doubled, to almost 64 times. In other words, the average House race this year cost as much as 64 households in the district earn in a year.

You can see the shift in this graph, which shows the ratio of campaign cost to median household income in the district. In 2000, most races cost between one and 20 times the household income in the district. That has shifted rightward since.

A more dramatic way to look at it is in maps. The map below shows the ratio in 2000, with the darkest color being the race with the highest ratio of cost-to-household-income. (That race was West Virginia's open seat in the 2nd District, where Republican Shelly Moore Capito beat free-spending Democrat Jim Humphreys, a win that set Capito on her course to the U.S. Senate.

Now click the "2014" button.

In some ways, this is a more powerful metric than simply measuring how much was spent on a race. In 2014, 17 races cost 200 times the median household income in the district. Not only does that suggest that political spending has snowballed, it makes clear that running for office is increasingly out of the grasp of the average American.