2026 Ballot Measure Campaigns Raise About $1.2 Billion; Signature-Gathering Hits Record $193M

Campaigns for statewide ballot measures in 2026 have already raised about $1.204 billion, and citizen initiative campaigns spent a record $193.37 million just to collect signatures and qualify measures for the ballot, according to a Ballotpedia update published Tuesday.

The figures underscore two realities of ballot-measure politics in 2026: It is still a billion-dollar arena, and the cost of getting a citizen initiative in front of voters has climbed to a new high.

Ballotpedia said 164 statewide ballot measures had been certified in 40 states for the 2026 cycle as of Oct. 26. Of those, 145 measures, or 88%, are set to be decided on Nov. 3, while 19 were decided earlier in the year. As of Oct. 26, Ballotpedia had tracked $1,203,978,085.77 in contributions to campaigns supporting or opposing measures that qualified for statewide ballots.

That overall total is a pre-election snapshot, not a final cycle count. Ballotpedia said the full 2024 cycle reached about $1.33 billion.

The sharpest record in the new data is the cost of qualifying citizen initiatives. Signature-drive spending refers to the money campaigns spend to gather enough valid voter signatures to place citizen-proposed measures on the ballot. Ballotpedia said initiative campaigns spent $193.37 million on petition drives in 2026, the highest single-year total it has recorded since it began tracking the data in 2010.

That figure covers 45 citizen-initiated measures for which cost data were available. There were 53 citizen-initiated measures on 2026 ballots, but Ballotpedia said signature-cost data were unavailable for eight of them — six in Colorado, one in Alaska and one in Missouri — so those measures were excluded from the $193.37 million total.

Ballotpedia put the average 2026 petition-drive cost at $4,297,007.01 and the average cost per required signature, or CPRS, at $13.51. It said the CPRS figure was down from $14.87 in 2024.

The money was heavily concentrated in a handful of states, especially California. Ballotpedia said California led the country with $798,882,687.63 raised across 14 measures. It was followed by Virginia, with $107,637,203.84 across four measures; Missouri, with $67,937,771.24 across nine measures; Colorado, with $43,090,784.25 across 14 measures; and Kansas, with $29,404,460.74 across two measures.

California also dominated signature-gathering costs. Ballotpedia said campaigns for nine California initiatives spent a combined $152.74 million on signature gathering, about 79% of the nationwide total. Ballotpedia said the most expensive single petition drive was for California Proposition 42, which cost $32,267,139.12.

Two California tax-related fights illustrate the scale of spending on individual measures. Ballotpedia identified Proposition 40, a one-time 5% wealth tax, as the most expensive campaign battle so far at $173,732,547.57 in total reported contributions: $33,219,546.42 in support and $140,513,001.15 in opposition. Proposition 42, which would ban new taxes on retirement holdings, personal assets and savings, was close behind at $172,646,878.61 total: $138,476,332.19 in support and $34,170,546.42 in opposition.

Ballotpedia said California’s competing tax-related measures, including Propositions 40, 41 and 42, could nullify one another depending on the vote outcome, helping drive unusually heavy spending. For those California measure pages, Ballotpedia said the most recent campaign-finance reports it had processed ran through Oct. 22.

Ballotpedia’s totals aggregate money raised by committees supporting or opposing measures and subtract committee-to-committee transfers to avoid double counting, meaning donor tallies reflect Ballotpedia’s accounting. Using that method, Ballotpedia listed SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West as the largest donor to Proposition 40 support committees at about $31.97 million, and it listed Google co-founder Sergey Brin as a $102 million donor to Proposition 42 support committees after committee-transfer adjustments.

The broader picture is mixed: Ballotpedia’s roughly $1.20 billion total for 2026 still trails the full 2024 cycle, but the $193.37 million spent on signature drives set a new high for a single year.