Tomorrow, voters will go to the polls across the country to decide another hotly contested and divisive election. Although we don’t yet know what the results of the election will be, and Americans are deeply divided on many issues, there are some things we do agree on, and some things we can say with certainty about this election. The 2024 election will almost certainly go down as one of the most expensive elections in American history. This election has been dominated by billionaire megadonors funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into Super PACs and dark money groups that can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections and flood the airwaves with advertisements – often without any connection to the states and communities where the races are taking place. 

An overwhelming majority of Americans agree that this is a major problem: 82.4% of Americans, including supermajorities of the two major parties and independents, believe that the influence of money in politics is a threat to our democracy. But there is some good news. Over 77% of Americans agree on a solution: The For Our Freedom Amendment, which would allow Congress and the states to reasonably regulate and limit money in our campaigns and elections. 

A Record-Breaking Election

• The 2024 election will be one of the most expensive elections in American history. Every presidential election cycle since 2000 has broken a record for nominal spending in federal elections set by the previous cycle, and 2024 looks to be no exception.
  • The 2024 election is projected to see more than $15.9 billion in total spending, beating the nominal spending record set in 2020 by nearly a billion dollars.
  • Most of that spending is on Congressional elections, which will rack up a total cost of more than $10.2 billion.
    • The spending in Congressional races will beat the previous spending record set in the 2022 midterms, which was over $8.9 billion.
  • The Presidential election will see more than $5.5 billion in total spending, almost double the more than $2.3 billion spent in 2016. 

Outside Spending

• 2024 has also seen a record-breaking amount of spending by Super PACs and other so-called “independent expenditure” groups. The Citizens United decision in 2010 enabled entities like corporations and unions, along with billionaire megadonors, to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising, so long as they don’t coordinate with candidates.
  • As of the end of October, we know that there has been more than $4 billion in outside spending in 2024, compared to $2.28 billion in 2020 and more than double the $1.66 billion spent in 2016.
  • Super PACs accounted for more than $2.5 billion (62%) of that spending.

Megadonors

• The 2024 election has been dominated by just a few major donors. These billionaire donors gave massive amounts of money to candidates and PACs of both parties, giving them significant influence far beyond a single citizen’s vote.
  • All together, the top 50 donors gave over $1.5 billion. That’s an average of over $30 million per person.
  • Only a tiny fraction of Americans make large political donations at all. Less than 0.87% of Americans made contributions over $200 (the threshold at which they must be itemized) to federal candidates, PACs, parties or outside groups.
    • Despite being from such a small fraction of the population, contributions made by that 0.87% of the population made up over 78% of all individual contributions. 

Out-of-State Money

• Donors outside of the candidates’ region fueled many of the most expensive races in 2024. Several of the congressional candidates who amassed large war chests raised only a single-digit percentage of their itemized contributions from within their constituency. For example:
  • Colorado’s 3^rd district election has seen the second-most money spent in a House race this cycle. Adam Frisch reported receiving only 24.7% of his donations from Coloradans and just 8.8% from those within the 3^rd district, all while outraising his opponent, Jeff Hurd, by nearly a 7:1 ratio.
  • The candidates for Virginia’s 7^th district, Eugene Vindman and Derrick Anderson, have raised and spent the most of any 2024 House race. Their swell of financial support, however, was dominated by out-of-state donors: just 28.3% of Anderson’s and 9.7% of Vindman’s itemized contributions came from Virginians.
  • The contest between Rep. Ruben Gallego and Kari Lake for Arizona’s open Senate seat has been one of the most expensive Senate races in 2024. Both candidates raised tens of millions of dollars, but roughly three-quarters of each candidate’s itemized contributions —76% for Gallego and 71% for Lake—came from out-of-state donors.

Dark Money

• We may not know exactly how much Dark Money was spent on the election for months, but the information we do have says that it was a lot.
  • Tracking spending by “dark money” groups is difficult, by design. These groups, often taking the form of nonprofits and other organizations that are not required to disclose their donors, are nevertheless allowed to spend large amounts of money on independent expenditures and contributions to Super PACs.
  • We do have some information on how much dark money was spent on the 2024 election: based on analysis of FEC filings from 2023, OpenSecrets was able to determine that dark money groups had already made $162 million in contributions for the 2024 cycle – more than double the amount spent at the same point in the 2020 election cycle.
  • More recent analysis by the Brennan Center found that by the end of September 2024, the four “shadow party” Super PACs (one for each party’s candidates for each body of Congress) received a total of $182 million from their associated dark money groups.