Elon Musk has spent roughly $366 million on the 2026 midterms, already more than the roughly $290 million he spent in the 2024 election cycle when Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris. There are still weeks to go before voters head to the polls.
Most of that money moved fast. Campaign finance records show Musk gave $276 million between July and September alone, all of it aimed at helping Republicans hold on to the House and the Senate. The New York Times reports he is likely the biggest individual donor in the 2026 midterms.
The biggest check, $158 million, went to the Senate Leadership Fund. That is a super PAC tied to Senate Majority Leader John Thune that works to elect Republicans to the Senate. A super PAC is a political group that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on ads, mailers and other campaign work, as long as it does not coordinate directly with a candidate’s campaign. There is no cap on how much one person can give, which is why billionaires use them.
Musk sent another $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House Speaker Mike Johnson that backs Republicans running for the House. He put $76 million into America PAC, the super PAC he started in 2024. He also gave $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, which is backing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s run for the U.S. Senate.
America PAC is Musk’s ground game. The group says it is building a door knocking operation across seven Senate battleground states and nearly three dozen House races. According to the PAC, about 3,000 paid canvassers were sent out across the country last week, and they have reached roughly 6.5 million households so far.
Not all of the $366 million went to the 2026 midterms. An America PAC spokesman said about $90 million spent this cycle paid for work tied to the last election or other causes. That includes an unsuccessful candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the program that paid $1 million to registered voters who signed a petition supporting free speech and gun rights.
The real number could be even higher. Musk has also given money through political groups that do not have to disclose their donors, so those amounts never show up in public filings.
His spending has picked up as Democrats’ chances of taking back the House and the Senate have improved. Whichever party controls Congress after the 2026 midterms decides which bills move and which investigations get opened for the rest of Trump’s term.
For Musk, $366 million is a tiny slice of his fortune. He became the first person ever worth more than $1 trillion after SpaceX went public in June.
