Cory Booker raised an eye-popping $ 4.6 million over the past three months for his bid in the New Jersey special election for the U.S. Senate . The Newark mayor 's cash haul that was announced Thursday is the latest example of the skyrocketing costs of winning election or re-election to Congress . Last year , winning Senate candidates spent an average of $ 10.3 million , according to the latest edition of Vital Statistics on Congress , which was released this week . That 's a 62 % increase , adjusted for inflation , since 1986 . The report indicates that it took , on average , $ 1.6 million to win a House seat in 2012 , a 344 % increase since 1986 . That increase is dwarfed by spending of outside independent groups , especially following the Supreme Court 's Citizens United decision in 2010 . That ruling removed legal barriers preventing corporations and unions from spending unlimited sums on federal elections . Senate insiders look outside as they run for re-election . Outside groups spent $ 457 million on Senate and House races in 2012 , according to the report , compared to $ 9 million in 1986 . In 1978 , such groups spent only $ 303,000 to influence Senate and House elections . `` The most striking to me is the explosion in outside spending , '' said Norm Ornstein , a resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute , which contributed to the report . `` The numbers for ( political action committees ) become a surrogate for the huge amounts outside what candidates and parties spend themselves . So for House Republicans , the nightmare is the Club for Growth ( an independent fiscal conservative group ) spending big money to challenge incumbents like Mike Simpson from the right , meaning the party is pulled even further to the right , '' Ornstein said . `` And for all incumbents , the fear of an alien predator individual or group parachuting in behind the lines in the final two weeks of the campaign with a multimillion dollar ad blitz means they spend even more precious hours doing call time to raise money , '' he added . But the report , which uses Federal Election Commission data compiled by the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute , indicated that incumbents in both the House and Senate , not surprisingly , tended to outspend their challengers . But the fund-raising disparity was far more pronounced in House races . On average , House incumbents outspent their rivals $ 1.7 million to $ 587,000 , a ratio of almost a 3-1 . Incumbent senators spent on average $ 10.7 million compared to $ 7.2 million for challengers . Challengers narrowed the spending gap with incumbents in competitive House races but not by much . Incumbents who were re-elected with less than 60 % of the vote raised on average $ 2.3 million in the 2012 cycle , slightly more than double the $ 929,000 spent on average by their challengers . Incumbents re-elected in competitive Senate races still outspent their rivals but by a much narrower gap of $ 12.8 million to $ 10.1 million . The report also shows that outspending opponents did not necessarily guarantee victory . House incumbents who lost their re-election bids in 2012 on average spent more than their challengers -- $ 3.1 million to $ 2.5 million .
Spending on winning Senate races has increased 62 % in 2012 dollars since 1986 . The increase is more pronounced in the House , where winning a race there increased by 334 % . Comment: