Money matters when it comes to winning elections. And races for the U.S. House are no exception. That’s why Washington campaign strategists and the pundit community are abuzz about the recently released second quarter fundraising numbers posted for congressional races.

Jim Ellis, who runs an election monitoring and analysis service at www.prisminfo.net, combed through all the numbers and found a couple interesting developments.

First, a few wake-up calls. Any time a congressional challenger raises more money than an incumbent, it’s time to take stock. Ellis found 10 cases where this occurred (eight Democratic challengers and two Republican):

To date, ten challengers have raised more campaign money than their incumbent opponents – eight Democrats and two Republicans. Six, Walt Minnick (ID-1; Sali), Cedric Richmond (LA-2; Jefferson – Democratic primary), Mark Schauer (MI-7; Walberg), Eric Massa (NY-29; Kuhl), Michael Skelly (TX-7; Culberson), and Darcy Burner (WA-8; Reichert) also show more cash-on-hand than their Republican adversary. Two Democrats, Victoria Wuslin (OH-2; Schmidt) and Tom Perriello (VA-5; Goode) have raised more than their respective opponents, but have less money available to spend. The two Republicans who have outpaced their Democratic incumbent opponents on the money trail are also in the situation of having fewer dollars currently in the bank. Those GOP candidates are former Rep. Jim Ryun (KS-2; Boyda), and Chris Hackett (PA-10; Carney).

Second, some races are already in hyper-speed when it comes to raising funds. And it looks like the most expensive race is shaping up in Connecticut, as a political consultant friend of mine likes to say, “both candidates are raising enough money to burn a wet mule.” Others are looking kind of cheap--at least by comparison. Ellis notes these patterns in Connecticut, Utah, Pennsylvania, and Illinois:

The most expensive race in the nation looks to be in CT-4, where eleven-term Rep. Chris Shays is projected to be in his third consecutive tough race. The Congressman currently posts $1.698 million cash-on-hand and his Democratic challenger, Greenwich Democratic chairman Jim Himes, has $1.444 million in the bank. The two cheapest campaigns: UT-3, where Jason Chaffetz -- who defeated Rep. Chris Cannon in the GOP primary last month -- and his Democratic opponent together have $20,000 cash-on-hand, and PA-5 (open John Peterson) where the two general election candidates have just over $91,000 combined in their political accounts. The two leading overall congressional fundraisers for the election cycle are Reps. Mark Kirk (R-IL-10; $3.8 million) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY-20; $3.7 million).