In January, 10 months before Election Day, candidates running for seats in the House and Senate and the outside groups hoping to influence those elections aired more than 9,500 television commercials.
The number of ads the two sides have run far outpaces Januaries in previous election cycles.
In January 2012, candidates for Congress ran a total of 2,966 individual advertisements.
In 2010, a midterm year, congressional candidates ran 6,029 spots.
Most of the ads are coming from outside groups. In just the last few days, one of those groups — Americans for Prosperity — has dropped millions of dollars into ad campaigns in Florida, Arkansas, Michigan, Iowa and West Virginia, with plans to run ads in several more states.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/02/06/the-one-chart-that-proves-the-midterm-elections-are-well-underway/