Record-high final bill for the mid-term elections - that's how much Elon Musk invested

Never before has so much money been invested in an American election as in the midterm elections. The final bill is expected to be close to SEK 120 billion, according to the organization Open secrets, which maps campaign financing in the US.

The price tag for the congressional elections also exceeds the cost of any previous presidential election.

Most of the money has been donated to the special fundraising organizations that are independent from the candidates' own campaigns. There is no upper limit for such gifts in the US, and it is possible for both companies and individuals to donate money anonymously.

The single largest contributor was Elon Musk, who gave about 4.6 billion kroner to bolster Republican candidates.

The biggest donor on the Democrats' side was the philanthropist and businessman George Soros, who shelled out nearly one billion kroner.

The mid-term elections included several hundred elections in all states, but the large amounts were concentrated in a few even elections.

The most expensive was the Senate election in Texas, where more than half a billion dollars was spent on influencing voters. External funds to boost Republican Ken Paxton exceeded contributions to Democrat James Talarico (Musk alone put $1.5 billion on Texas), but for gifts directly to the candidates' own campaigns, the relationship was the reverse: Talarico's campaign had raised $1.4 billion from individual donors, compared to Paxton's $215 million. (The election was won by Talarico.)

Most of the really big money before the election has had a Republican stamp and comes from a small number of extremely rich people, like the entrepreneur and multi-billionaire Musk.

The 40 largest donors gave a total of more than 23 billion kroner up to mid-October, according to the organization Brennan Center for Justice, a sevenfold increase since 2014. Notable is another sharp change: then twice as much was given to benefit Democratic candidates, today three times as much went to Republican candidates.

The Democrats have had greater impact through more, but smaller, individual contributions directly to the candidates' own campaigns.

The difference is visible in the list of direct contributions to the campaigns, which is topped by ten Democrats with James Talarico in Texas, Jon Ossoff in Georgia and Sherrod Brown in Ohio at the top.

But this year's midterm elections show that there seems to be a limit to what money can currently buy. Despite the large sums for the Republicans, the Democrats won in state after state.

It is probably also about how the funds are used.

Much of the money raised went to television ads, and in the states where the campaigns were the tightest, many voters grew tired of being bombarded with commercials that often smeared the opposing side. Television is in itself a primary source of news for a smaller and smaller part of the electorate.

Elon Musk commented on the result on social media: "Guess my whale-influencing space lasers didn't work this time."