Nearly 2,500 Candidates Jockey For House And Senate Seats
Plus, Top 10 Senate Races Raised $245 Million in the First Three Months of 2018
By Jillian S. Ambroz
The runup to the mid-term elections is breaking all sorts of records. But in the Age of Trump, we are seeing a call to activism like never before. That’s extending to people running for office. To date, nearly 2,500 people have declared candidacy for Congressional and Senate seats – more than in the past three election cycles. That’s a lot of people vying for 470 seats up for grabs come November.
So far, 2,192 have announced their intention to run for a Congressional seat and 286 have filed to run for Senate seats. Democrats make up the greatest portion of declared candidacies with 49.5%, compared to Republicans at 38.8% and independent or third-party candidates representing 11.7%. This compares to a total of 2,263 candidates who ran for Congress in 2016; 2,142 in 2014 and 2,412 in 2012, according to Ballotpedia.
As for official party fundraising efforts, the Republicans know this is a critical election year. The Republican National Committee (RNC) has raised almost double what the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has raised by the end of the first quarter, at just over $39 million. The DNC had raised just over $22 million in the same period, according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The RNC reported having just under $43 million in cash on hand with no debts owed compared to the DNC which had $9 million in cash on hand with more than $6 million in debts owed.
But this does not paint the whole picture of fundraising efforts. As mentioned, this reflects the official party fundraising efforts. When looking across the national map at the races and the individual candidates’ abilities to raise money, the trends show Democrats outraising Republicans.
https://www.dcreport.org/2018/04/30/nearly-2500-candidates-jockey-for-house-and-senate-seats/