Miami Herald, August 2026
Campaign fundraising in the 2026 Senate battlegrounds has become overwhelmingly nationalized, leaving most high-stakes candidates far more reliant on out-of-state donors than the voters they hope to represent. Continuing a decades-long retreat from locally sourced campaign money, an OpenSecrets analysis of 17 candidates across nine key battleground states shows that two-thirds of the $289 million in individual contributions raised through mid-July came from out-of-state donors. Fourteen candidates received the majority of their individual contributions from beyond their borders. Continuing a decades-long retreat from locally sourced campaign money, an OpenSecrets analysis of 17 candidates across nine key battleground states shows that two-thirds of the $289 million in individual contributions raised through mid-July came from out-of-state donors. Fourteen candidates received the majority of their individual contributions from beyond their borders.
“Most House and Senate races are fairly nationalized anyway,” Kenneth Miller, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, political science professor who has researched the trend, told OpenSecrets. “The notion that all politics is local … that was probably never true in the first place.” The findings highlight how increasingly uncommon home-state donor dominance has become in modern Senate races – reinforcing a pattern that has sharpened across recent election cycles. Several structural forces are driving the shift. Experts point to limited donor bases in less-populated states from Maine to Alaska, the rise of online fundraising platforms like WinRed and ActBlue, and a national donor class focused on controlling congressional majorities rather than backing local candidates.
