JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Millions of votes have already been cast in the midterm elections, and billions of dollars have already been spent. President Trump, candidates and their surrogates are making a final sprint across the country, trying to make their case to voters. NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro has been watching all of this and is on the line now. Hey there.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey there. Great to be with you.
SUMMERS: Great to talk with you. So, Domenico, let's start with this. What do we know about how many people have already voted, and what can the early voting data tell us at this point?
MONTENARO: Yeah. Early voting is pretty robust. We're six days out and almost 40 million people have voted, and that's climbing. But it would be folly to read too much into early voting. Republicans overwhelmingly vote on Election Day in person. So that's a big wild card here.
In the states that do report early votes by party, so far, the split is 44% Democratic to 31% Republican. That may sound like a big Democratic advantage, but even in a year when they lost seats in the House, like 2022, Democrats won early voting 43 to 44. So not a huge difference from then to now.
And in a place like Texas, when you look at the numbers, they're eye-popping. But early voting has actually been lagging behind 2018 when Democrat Beto O'Rourke had lots of energy and enthusiasm behind him, but he wound up losing Texas by three points to Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
SUMMERS: OK. So a little hard to tell, but we do know that there's lots of money that's flowing in trying to influence voters through ads. And I understand that that's a record. What do we know?
MONTENARO: Yeah. Here's another area that gets a lot of attention for people wanting to read tea leaves, but it might not tell us much. Overall, it's been $11.5 billion spent - the most ever for any election, including the 2024 presidential election. So it's a mind-blowing sort of amount of money. And places like California and Texas have seen more than $1 billion each in ads.
SUMMERS: Wow.
MONTENARO: The states with, you know, top Senate races are just being inundated, you know? So here's Republican strategist Mike DuHaime, who's a former political director at the Republican National Committee.
MIKE DUHAIME: It's just massive and also shows the difference now with super PACs and just how big they are and how much money is being spent. And it matters, but at some point, you know, the volume becomes so loud, it begins to cancel each other out and drown each other out. But it certainly matters if one side has significantly more resources than the other.
MONTENARO: Yeah, you wonder if you hit a saturation point. But the reason for seeing these amounts go up and up is that idea that they have to keep pace. And DuHaime says the money might not matter as much when it's about someone like President Trump because everyone has an opinion about him.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
MONTENARO: But the spending really can matter for lesser-known candidates or challengers in congressional races. At the end of the day, wealthy people and special interests want to maintain or expand their wealth. That's why they're giving this kind of money. They want to maintain their power and their influence.
SUMMERS: Yeah, that's right. Now we've got to talk about the Elon Musk factor here, and I know that he has just made these huge contributions to Republican candidates. Tell us about it.
MONTENARO: Yeah. He's the single largest donor to Republicans this cycle, hands down. He's given more than $300 million to Republicans, half of that just for the Texas Senate race. And we know Musk has lots of personal financial interests in Texas. It's just an incredible amount of money, but he is the world's richest man. So keep in mind, he's worth $1 trillion. So him doling out $300 million, mathematically, is the equivalent of somebody worth $100,000 giving, well, 30 bucks.
SUMMERS: I mean, Domenico, I do not have to tell you this, but we are in the home stretch. Election Day is almost here, and President Trump is out campaigning. He seems to be everywhere. Tonight, in fact, he is in Ohio. That is a state he won in 2024. Tell us what you're seeing from the stops that the president's been making recently.
MONTENARO: Yeah. I mean, in addition to Ohio, he's been in places like Texas and Kansas and South Carolina, red states that Republicans did not think at the beginning of this cycle would be competitive at all, but they are. And ironically, that's because of Trump's low approval ratings and what's been a difficult economy for a lot of people. But he's out there, despite his unpopularity, because he's still popular with the Republican base. And this election very well could come down to Republican turnout. So Trump needs to get his voters out to the polls, and that's going to be a big thing I'm going to be watching on Election Day because if Republicans are able to go in big numbers...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
MONTENARO: ...Then, you know, they might mitigate a Democratic wave. If they don't, you could see a really big Democratic wave.
SUMMERS: NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Thank you.
MONTENARO: You're welcome.
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