A year before the midterms, quarterly fundraising reports are already reshuffling expectations and causing some candidates to drop out. And candidates are spending almost as much raising money as they collect. That’s because in congressional primaries and general elections, the top fundraiser still wins 92 percent of the time. Danielle Thomsen finds that candidates are raising money earlier and in larger amounts than ever. And everything from who runs for office to who rules in Congress is now governed by money, even though most of the value is in signaling rather than actually using it to communicate with voters.
