$1.9 Billion
The Brennan Center for Justice documented $1.9 billion in dark money spent on the 2024 federal elections. That is nearly double the prior record of $1 billion in 2020. OpenSecrets reported total outside spending of $4.5 billion, with more than half from groups that do not fully disclose their funding sources.
$1.9 billion in dark money. The most secretive election since Citizens United. More than half of $4.5B in outside spending came from undisclosed sources.
The 2024 cycle was the most secretive since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. Citizens United ruled that corporate and outside spending on elections is protected speech. Dark money is the result. The donors are anonymous. The spending is not.
Where It Went
Senate Democrats’ flagship dark money group, Majority Forward, spent over $113 million. House Majority PAC’s spending topped $196 million. On the other side, One Nation was the most active non-disclosing group, sponsoring over 46,000 ad airings in seven Senate races.
Pennsylvania’s Senate race received $240 million in outside spending, putting it in the top 12 most expensive elections of all time. A single Senate seat.
Dark money is bipartisan. Both sides use it. The problem is not which party benefits. The problem is that the public cannot see who is buying influence over its representatives.
The Connection to Everything Else
The anti-trans funding trail documented $485 million in annual budgets across four organizations that write model legislation. The RealPage rent-fixing case showed how algorithmic coordination can replace visible collusion. Dark money is the electoral equivalent. The influence is real. The source is invisible.
When the CFPB was gutted, the industries it regulated celebrated. Those same industries spend millions through dark money channels to elect the officials who appoint the people who do the gutting. The cycle is closed. The money funds the campaigns. The campaigns install the appointees. The appointees defund the regulators. The industries benefit. They donate more.
Freedom House cited the U.S. administration’s weakening of “anticorruption safeguards and enforcement practices” as a factor in the country’s lowest-ever democracy score. $1.9 billion in undisclosed election spending is what the weakening looks like in practice.
Read more on the Corruption series and the regulatory capture brief.