If money were votes, Dembo would be winning. By a lot.

The campaign finance reports for the race to replace Andy Barr were due last week, and I pulled the numbers over the weekend and did quite a bit of analysis of them. What follows is the reported data through 3/31/26.

(And if you like graphs, just wait, because so do I!)

First, the Republicans

Here’s the basic numbers for the Republicans in the race. I included loans made to the campaigns because they can really skew how the numbers look. If you take the loans out of the total raised, you get a much truer picture of how their fund-raising is going.

As you can see, Ralph Alvarado is way out in front by almost any measure you want to use. Will he win the primary? Probably.

The Democrats

Let’s begin with the same summary I did for the Repubs.

Some things to note:

• In terms of actual fund-raising, not counting loans, Zach Dembo has out-raised everyone in the race, on both sides of the aisle. He has almost out-raised all the other Dem candidates combined.
• Dembo also has (as of this report) almost as much Cash on Hand as Alvarado.
• The only Dem to loan their campaign money was David Kloiber.
• And even though Cherlynn Stevenson is assumed to be the front-runner by many, both Dembo and Erin Petrey have more CoH than her.

And, for those of you who, like me, like your data in a visual format, here’s a graph of the money raised by the candidates, not counting loans.

Digging deeper

The problem with just looking at the top-line numbers is that they are often skewed by things like loans and donations from PACs and other campaign committees.

One key metric is the number of donations from actual individuals, and not from those other sources. Along with the total number, it can be instructive to see how many came from within the state as opposed to other parts of the country.

In order to see what they looks like, I took out donations from anyone that wasn’t an individual donor, including donations from the candidate themselves. (Not the same as a loan, since it doesn’t have to be paid back.)

So, how many individual donations did each candidate receive so far?

• Stevenson – 1,619 (average donation of $292)
• Dembo – 1,032 (average of $684)
• Petrey – 382 (average of $427)
• Kloiber – 73 (average of $1,163)

And in graph form:

However, as a stats nerd, I really, really dislike using averages, as a few big numbers can skew them tremendously. Fortunately, the FEC site breaks down donations by size, which helps us see which candidates are building their campaign on lots of grassroots donations, and which are counting on a few people to max out.

Here’s the breakdown for the donor mix for each of the candidates:

• As you can see, almost half of Stevenson’s donations are in the under-$200 range, with the next biggest chunk being the over-$2,000 group of donations.
• Dembo, on the other hand, has really been able to get donors to put in significant amounts, which could auger well for the general if he wins the primary.

And finally, we want to know where the donations are coming from: Kentucky, or elsewhere? Here’s that breakdown, listing the leading states by candidate:

• Stevenson got 83% of her individual donation dollar total and 89% of her donation count from Kentucky. The next highest were California and DC.
• Dembo got 74% of his dollar total and 75% of his donation count from Kentucky. The next highest were DC (which makes sense, given his background), and Massachusetts.
• Petry got 33% of her dollar total and 29% of her donation count from Kentucky. The next highest were Virginia and DC.
• And Kloiber got 61% of his dollar total and 71% of his donation count from Kentucky. The next highest were Florida and California.

Okay, there’s my deep dive into the fund-raising numbers in KY-06. I’m going to do the same thing for the Senate race, so watch for it.

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