Montana U.S. Senate — 2026 General Election: All Funding

7.14 — Sources & methodology

Sources

All figures derive from filings with the Federal Election Commission. Committee filings: Ab PAC · Senate Leadership Fund (SLF PAC) · Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP Action) · More Jobs, Less Government · NRA Victory Fund, Inc. · Leadership In Action · Defend The Vote · United Democracy Project (UDP) · WinSenate · Montanans For Public Lands · High Plains PAC · Independent PAC · American Mission · Montana Freedom PAC · Wild Montana Action Fund.

Deduplication

The same expenditure can appear up to three times — as a raw electronic-filing row, as a 24/48-hour notice (Form 24 / Form 5), and re-itemized later in a committee's regular periodic report (Form 3X), with amendments adding further copies. To avoid overstating totals, amendment chains are collapsed; then, per committee, the authoritative ledger keeps non-notice rows disseminated on or before the coverage-end date of the committee's latest filed regular report, plus notice rows disseminated after that date. Memo entries are excluded from all sums.

Attribution rule

Spending that opposes one candidate is counted as benefiting the other. Benefiting a candidate = independent expenditures supporting that candidate + independent expenditures opposing the opponent. Electioneering communications and communication costs are listed separately in §7.12 and are not added to these totals. The rule applies only to spending disseminated after primary day, once both principal candidates were set; see the scope note below. Montana's general election has a third funded candidate, Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead. The two-way tables on this page cover Kurt Alme and independent Seth Bodnar, the two candidates with the most money deployed for and against them; spending that opposes one of them is credited to the other even though some of it may have been intended to help Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead. Every expenditure that named Democratic nominee Alani Bankhead is listed, row by row, under excludedOtherTargets in the full snapshot JSON (§7.13) and summarized in the note below.

FEC-reported expenditures only — no ad-tracker reservations included.

Donor-network cross-match (§7.9b)

Identity key: surname letters (suffixes such as Jr./III dropped) plus the first given-name token (honorifics dropped), then ZIP5 (preferred) or state. Candidate side: the FEC's processed individual-contribution file for the 2026 cycle (every authorized committee's Schedule A individual lines as itemized on its regular Form 3 reports; memo entries and non-individual entities excluded; the FEC's processed data reflects the latest amendment of each report). Network side: AIPAC PAC's regular Form 3X reports covering January 1, 2023 through August 31, 2026 (44 reports, 18,211 distinct donor identities), including earmarks to every candidate and direct PAC contributions. Result: Kurt Alme (R) 11 matched donors, $24,500 (2.6% of itemized individual receipts through June 30, 2026); Seth Bodnar (I) 8 matched donors, $20,110 (0.7% of itemized individual receipts through June 30, 2026). Reading: an overlap of donors, reported as a descriptive statistic and kept out of every total. It is not evidence that AIPAC PAC solicited or bundled the money — the FEC record shows conduit passage only through the earmarks in §7.9 and through lobbyist-bundler reports (Form 3L; none filed by Kurt Alme's committees; none filed by Seth Bodnar's committees). Known limits: common names in the same ZIP can collide (the opponent's block is the empirical control); donors who list different name spellings or addresses on the two sides are missed; unitemized contributions cannot be matched; amounts are net of negative Schedule A adjustment lines but refunds disbursed on Schedule B, where present, are not netted.

Independent expenditures that named other Montana U.S. Senate candidates this cycle — candidates eliminated in or absent from the June 2, 2026 primaries, or running outside the two-way matchup: Alani Ines Bankhead (45 rows, $3,605,878); Reilly Neill (23 rows, $1,200,344); Tim Sheehy (5 rows, $17,828); Alani Bankhead (1 row, $1,127) — are not attributable under the two-way rule. 74 expenditure(s) totaling $4,825,177 that targeted only them are excluded from the two-way accounting above; they are itemized, row by row, under excludedOtherTargets in the full snapshot JSON (§7.13).

Scope: general election only

This page covers the general election, November 3, 2026, between the two principal candidates set by the June 2, 2026 primaries. Independent expenditures naming either candidate but disseminated on or before primary day — 21 filing row(s) totaling $1,584,089 as of October 8, 2026 — are primary-period spending: they are kept out of the general-election totals and two-way tables and are not credited to either candidate (before primary day each was running against different opponents, so "opposing one benefits the other" does not hold). Largest primary-period spenders: Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP Action) $849,638 (supporting Alme); Montana Freedom PAC $334,742 (opposing Alme); American Mission $286,358 (supporting Alme). They are listed by committee in the appendix at the bottom of this page (§7.15), and every row is in the primary-period ledger CSV (and under prePrimary in the full snapshot JSON, §7.13). The general-election window has no upper cutoff: everything disseminated after primary day counts, through election day and any post-election filings. Date basis: 9 row(s) totaling $35,840 carry no dissemination date in the FEC file and are placed by their expenditure or transaction date instead (9 row(s), $35,840, fall after primary day; 0 row(s), $0, on or before it). None of them falls within 7 days of primary day. Every ledger row states its date basis in the CSV (date_basis column).

Disclosure gaps

• Campaign finances (§7.1 Raised / Spent / Cash on hand, §7.6, §7.7, §7.8) are each principal committee's cycle-to-date totals through June 30, 2026: the FEC candidate summary file does not separate primary-period from general-election receipts and disbursements, so those figures include the primaries. Activity after June 30, 2026 first appears in the October 15 quarterly report, covering through September 30.
• Super PAC donor lists run through each committee's latest filed report (per-committee cutoffs below). Monthly filers (Americans for Prosperity Action, American Mission, Ab PAC) disclose about 20 days after each month ends; quarterly filers (Independent PAC, Montana Freedom PAC, More Jobs, Less Government, High Plains PAC, Montanans For Public Lands, NRA Victory Fund, Inc.) next disclose on October 15, covering through September 30, then in a pre-general report due October 22 covering through October 14. Independent expenditures themselves are reported within 24 or 48 hours and are current well ahead of the donor lists.
• National committees (Ab PAC, American Mission, Americans for Prosperity Action, High Plains PAC, NRA Victory Fund, Inc., Senate Leadership Fund, WinSenate, Defend The Vote, United Democracy Project) raise for many races; their donor tables are cycle-wide, all races, and cannot be attributed to Montana specifically.

Super PAC donor disclosure cutoffs (per committee)

• Ab PAC — donors disclosed through August 31, 2026
• Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP Action) — donors disclosed through August 31, 2026
• More Jobs, Less Government — donors disclosed through July 29, 2026
• NRA Victory Fund, Inc. — donors disclosed through June 30, 2026
• Montanans For Public Lands — donors disclosed through June 30, 2026
• High Plains PAC — donors disclosed through September 30, 2026
• Independent PAC — donors disclosed through June 30, 2026
• American Mission — donors disclosed through August 31, 2026
• Montana Freedom PAC — donors disclosed through June 30, 2026

Labeling is strictly neutral throughout, with identical footnote treatment for both sides' funding structures. Committees that raise nationally are described identically whichever candidate they support.

How to cite: VoteLog, "Montana U.S. Senate — 2026 General Election: All Funding," https://votelog.org/investigations/montana-senate-general-money (last updated October 8, 2026, 5:18 PM ET).

Full method: VoteLog methodology §11 — Senate race money pages.