How Many People Are Running? — We The People of the U.S. of A.

The number

4,290registered with the FEC

2,813raised any money

1,477raised $0

9.2registered per seat

So it is not your imagination. For roughly 435 House seats and 33 regular class-2 seats, plus any specials, more than four thousand people have filed paperwork with the federal government saying they are running.

But “running” means three different things, and almost nobody separates them. That is most of why this feels unmanageable.

Three numbers, three meanings

What it means	House	Senate	Total
Registered with the FEC — filed a form. Anyone may do this.	3,623	667	4,290
Raised any money at all — cleared the lowest possible bar of seriousness.	2,481	332	2,813
On your actual ballot — decided by your state, not the FEC.	Not in this data. See below.

Filing with the FEC is a form. It is not a nomination, not a party's blessing, and not a place on a ballot. 1,477 of the 4,290 registered candidates have raised zero dollars. That is not an accusation against any of them — running for office is an ordinary right, and starting with nothing is where most campaigns start. It is simply the reason the headline number feels wild.

What this page will not tell you

WE DO NOT KNOW WHO IS ON YOUR BALLOT — and neither does the FEC

Ballot access is decided by each state, under state law, by the Secretary of State — signature thresholds, filing deadlines, party conventions and primaries. The FEC records federal campaign finance, not ballot qualification. Any site that turns this list into “your candidates” is guessing. For your real ballot, go to your Secretary of State — our How to Vote page links all 51.

No score is assigned to anyone on this page, and no one is ranked. These are counts.

By state — click yours

Sorted by how many people registered. The “$” columns are the subset who have raised any money at all. 56 states and territories appear.

Click your state to see who represents you there right now — both senators, every House district, with attendance, PAC share, and the phone number of their nearest office. That is the next step: this page counts the people asking for the job, the next one shows the people who already have it.

THE FIVE ROWS THAT ARE NOT LINKS

American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands appear in the FEC’s count but our map does not cover them yet. They are shown as plain text rather than as links, because a link that quietly goes nowhere is worse than an honest gap.

State	House	House $	Senate	Senate $	Total
CA →	397	264	7	0	404
TX →	351	254	38	16	389
FL →	302	228	37	13	339
NY →	194	128	8	0	202
IL →	155	111	34	22	189
GA →	151	113	21	8	172
VA →	119	86	14	9	133
NC →	101	70	29	12	130
MI →	103	69	24	12	127
NJ →	108	79	19	7	127
PA →	107	64	7	0	114
OH →	95	67	17	9	112
TN →	87	52	15	5	102
CO →	75	43	22	13	97
SC →	60	45	33	22	93
AZ →	87	52	4	0	91
MO →	78	49	2	0	80
KY →	53	38	22	13	75
MD →	71	48	3	0	74
MN →	54	39	19	13	73
WA →	68	48	3	0	71
IN →	64	37	6	0	70
LA →	43	29	24	11	67
NV →	59	38	2	0	61
WI →	60	40	1	0	61
AL →	40	31	17	11	57
MA →	47	32	10	8	57
OK →	37	28	19	13	56
UT →	50	29	2	0	52
IA →	39	29	12	8	51
ME →	15	10	25	15	40
OR →	32	23	8	3	40
CT →	37	26	1	0	38
KS →	26	13	12	10	38
NH →	23	19	14	9	37
NE →	22	18	11	6	33
MS →	23	14	8	6	31
DC →	24	11	5	0	29
MT →	15	12	14	10	29
WV →	16	10	13	10	29
AR →	16	12	10	8	26
AK →	12	4	13	3	25
ID →	16	10	8	6	24
WY →	14	10	10	6	24
NM →	11	10	10	2	21
DE →	7	4	13	5	20
RI →	9	6	9	4	18
SD →	9	5	4	4	13
HI →	10	5	2	0	12
ND →	9	4	1	0	10
VI	8	6	1	0	9
VT →	7	3	0	0	7
AS	2	1	2	0	4
GU	3	3	0	0	3
MP	2	2	0	0	2
PR	0	0	2	0	2

By party, as filed

This is the party each candidate wrote on their own FEC paperwork. It is self-reported, and it is not a measure of anything.

Party as filed	Registered
Democratic Party	1,973
Republican Party	1,663
Independent	283
Libertarian Party	79
No Party Affiliation	47
Unaffiliated	30
Democratic-Farmer-Labor	28
None	26
Green Party	23
Other	22
Unknown	19
Write-In	18

Check it yourself

Every number here came from one free endpoint, no paid tools: the OpenFEC API (/v1/candidates/?election_year=2026), and the script that built this page is build_who_is_running.py in our repo. FEC.gov's own candidate browser shows the same records.

If a count here is wrong, that is where you catch us. Tell us and the correction gets a date.