Dark Money Hit a Record High of $1.9 Billion in 2024 Federal Races

The 2024 federal election cycle was the most secretive since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. Dark money groups, nonprofits and shell companies that spend on elections without revealing their donors, plowed more than $1.9 billion into last year’s election cycle, a dramatic increase from the prior record of $1 billion in 2020.

Citizens United, which allowed corporations and unions to raise and spend unlimited amounts on elections, was premised significantly on the Court’s assumption that all of this newly permitted election spending would be transparent. In reality, many of the groups the Court allowed to spend money on elections were not required to disclose their donors. Since Citizens United, dark money groups have spent at least $4.3 billion on federal elections.

As dark money has proliferated, it has also evolved. Immediately after Citizens United, many newly empowered groups purchased their own ads to influence elections. Some of these purchases were reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which makes such information publicly available. However, since at least 2020, dark money groups have largely shifted toward making large transfers to allied super PACs — in amounts that far exceeded any previous direct ad spending. These totals can only be tabulated by reviewing each super PAC’s campaign finance reports. Dark money groups also increasingly run ads, including many online ads, that are worded and timed such that they do not trigger FEC disclosure requirements.

This analysis offers the first comprehensive accounting of dark money in the most recent federal election cycle. It combines publicly available FEC data with data on otherwise undisclosed television spending from the Wesleyan Media Project, a research institute that tracks political advertising, and data on digital political ad sales that certain online platforms voluntarily make public. Some other categories of undisclosed political spending cannot be reliably tracked. Therefore, the $1.9 billion figure reported in this analysis necessarily — and perhaps substantially — underestimates the true scale of dark money spending in 2024.

The term dark money as used in this analysis refers to election spending and contributions by nonprofits and shell companies that are not legally required to — and do not — disclose the identities of their donors. The lack of transparency does not make the spending analyzed here illegal, although the Brennan Center supports legislation to require full disclosure of more of it. Dark money flowed into the 2024 elections in four ways that can be tracked: contributions to super PACs, direct spending reported to the FEC, TV spending, and online spending.

Contributions to Super PACs

During the 2024 election cycle, shell companies and 501(c) nonprofits that did not disclose their funding sources gave $1.3 billion to super PACs — more than in the prior two election cycles combined.

Citizens United and later court cases led to the creation of super PACs, which can receive contributions of any amount, including from corporations and unions. Although super PACs are supposed to operate independently from the candidates they support, many are established by candidates’ close allies or run by former staff or party operatives. Many share consultants with campaigns and even enlist candidates to help them fundraise.

Recent FEC rulings have opened the door to even more direct cooperation between candidates and super PACs in certain critical areas — including canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts. Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign outsourced many of these activities in swing states to a super PAC run by his largest supporter, tech billionaire Elon Musk, while Kamala Harris leaned heavily on a super PAC run by Democratic Party operatives.

Super PACs are required to report their donors, but they can easily hide the original sources of their funds by taking money from dark money groups. This practice has exploded in recent elections. Many of the top-spending super PACs in 2024 — including Future Forward USA, which worked to elect Harris, and the Senate Leadership Fund, which is tied to Republican Party leaders — had affiliated dark money groups that provided eight- or nine-figure sums.

The chart below shows how dark money has evolved since 2010 according to FEC data. Direct ad spending by dark money groups used to be the main reported funding avenue, but its 2012 peak is now eclipsed by dark money contributions to super PACs in each of the previous three elections. (For the purposes of this analysis, the term super PACs includes groups called Carey committees or hybrid PACs that have both an independent expenditure arm and an arm that takes limited contributions.)

Television Ad Spending

Dark money groups spent approximately $242 million on TV ads targeting federal candidates during the 2024 election cycle, according to new Wesleyan Media Project research. The vast majority was not reported to the FEC. As explained in the methodology below, this study’s dark money total of $1.9 billion avoids double counting the small amount of spending that may be included in both data from the Wesleyan Media Project and FEC data.

Federal rules only require certain campaign ads to be reported to the FEC. Ads that do not expressly advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate using unambiguous phrases like “vote for” or “vote against” are generally not subject to reporting requirements, except for TV and radio ads run within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of Election Day.

By running ads that avoid explicit calls to vote for or against a particular candidate outside of the mandated reporting windows, dark money groups can bypass FEC disclosure rules. Some of this spending can still be tracked because it is available through TV ad tracking services, and those ads are reflected in this analysis. But additional TV spending on streaming applications like Hulu and local TV ad buys means the actual total exceeds the $242 million discussed here.

Online Ad Spending

Digital ads are another form of dark money spending that is often missing from FEC data, and data from the largest online platforms shows that hidden sources spent $315 million. Like TV ads, online ads can avoid disclosure requirements if they do not explicitly advocate for the election or defeat of a particular candidate. Unlike TV and radio ads, online ads that mention candidates are not subject to FEC reporting regardless of proximity to Election Day.

Nevertheless, some major online platforms voluntarily maintain databases of political ad sales. These datasets indicate that about 320 groups that do not disclose their donors collectively spent more than $281 million on online ads during the 2024 election cycle without disclosing any spending to the FEC. Another 38 nonprofits that do not disclose their donors but reported at least some spending to the FEC spent an additional $34 million on online ads. (As with TV spending, this analysis does not double count spending that appears in both data from online platforms and FEC data.) Without standardized disclosure regulations for online political advertising, however, the full extent of digital election spending remains difficult to quantify.

The major platforms that reported political ad sales for 2024 are Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, X, and Snapchat. Spending totals for Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube were collected by OpenSecrets, and spending totals for X and Snapchat were obtained directly from those platforms.

Social media platforms owned by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, attracted the majority of documented online spending by dark money groups for the 2024 cycle — about $238 million. Google and YouTube, which are owned by Alphabet Inc., attracted about $66.2 million in dark money over the same period. Snapchat documented about $7 million. X reported around $3.9 million in dark money ad spending, though analysts have raised questions about the completeness of its data.

Importantly, each online platform makes its own decisions about how to define reportable political advertising, and these definitions can shift over time. Other practices, including what information is provided for ads and the format in which it is presented, also differ considerably. Researchers have documented significant gaps in multiple political ad archives. And even the most comprehensive archives generally exclude certain categories of spending, such as payments to influencers for content or political endorsements, further obscuring the whole picture.

Direct Spending Reported to the FEC

Nonprofits that do not disclose their donors reported about $43 million in direct spending to the FEC during the entire 2024 cycle. That amounts to less than 2.5 percent of all dark money in last year’s election. A small portion of this FEC-disclosed spending went to ads that are also included in TV and online ad data discussed above, but this analysis avoids double counting those expenditures.

The $43 million in direct spending is an increase over the prior cycle. During the 2022 midterms, dark money groups reported less than $25 million in spending to the FEC, the lowest total since the Citizens United decision. Spending reported to the FEC peaked at around $309 million in 2012. However, as groups switched to a strategy of largely funding allied super PACs, direct spending reported to the FEC gradually dropped.

Spending That Cannot Be Tracked

Several other types of election spending by dark money groups have not been included in this analysis because they are difficult or impossible to track. As noted, not all online platforms release spending data, and none publishes data on certain forms of expenditures, like paid influencers. This analysis also does not include data for radio ads that are not reported to the FEC, and, as mentioned above, streaming video applications and some TV spending. Other forms of communication, like billboards and flyers, are also generally left out of FEC data unless they expressly advocate for or against a candidate.

Both Democrats and Republicans benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in dark money in 2024. More spending backed Democrats, as has been the case since the 2018 midterm elections (before which more dark money typically favored Republicans). The presidential race was the source of much of this disparity in last year’s cycle.

Overall, dark money groups boosting Democrats put up about $1.2 billion to influence 2024 elections, while groups boosting Republicans accounted for about $664 million.

The presidential election attracted more super PAC spending — totaling around $2 billion — than any other race in the 2024 cycle. Political committees supporting Trump or Harris collectively received more than $500 million from dark money groups.

Future Forward USA Action, the main dark money group supporting Joe Biden and then Harris, gave the most. The 501(c)(4) nonprofit poured more than $304 million into spending on ads and contributions to its closely tied super PAC, Future Forward USA. That means that $1 out of every $6 from undisclosed sources in the 2024 election cycle came through a single dark money group.

At the same time, multiple dark money groups also worked to elect Trump, and the flow of money increased substantially in the final months of the election cycle. Securing American Greatness, after its incorporation in March 2024, spent more than $81 million, about $67 million of which went to super PACs.

Another major supporter of Trump’s presidential bid was Building America’s Future, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that reportedly received funding from Musk. It contributed more than $35 million to super PACs that spent heavily on seemingly pro-Harris ads falsely suggesting that her campaign supported divisive policies.

The presidential election was not the only race to attract large sums of money from secret donors in 2024. The main dark money groups aligned with the Democratic and Republican Parties in Congress spent more than $432 million, up from about $346 million during the 2022 midterms and $320 million during the 2020 cycle. These groups are 501(c)(4) nonprofits that each have ties with party leadership and share staff and resources with an affiliated super PAC.

Majority Forward, a dark money nonprofit affiliated with Senate Democratic leadership, poured more than $136 million into key Senate races. More than $81.7 million of that money went to Senate Majority PAC, the main super PAC aligned with Senate Democrats in recent cycles. But unlike prior cycles, Senate Majority PAC did not spend the funds directly. Instead, it seeded a new super PAC named WinSenate that spent the money on ads to influence Senate races.

One Nation, the main dark money group with ties to Senate Republicans, spent about $123 million in 2024. Of that, $59.3 million went toward advertising, mainly to TV ads. More than $53 million worth of airtime made One Nation the top dark money spender on TV ads during the 2024 election cycle, according to research by the Wesleyan Media Project. One Nation also steered more than $63 million to an allied super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.

House Republicans’ dark money group, the American Action Network, poured $69 million into the 2024 elections. The main dark money group affiliated with House Democrats, House Majority Forward, gave about $61 million to influence congressional races.

Dark money spending in federal elections broke records in 2024, even as it became harder to track. Fueled by Citizens United, secretive political spending has eroded accountability and Americans’ trust in the political process. The trend toward secrecy in U.S. campaigns is likely to continue until Congress takes action to require disclosure of large political contributions and expenditures.

Methodology

The methodology for this analysis yielded a conservative estimate of dark money in 2024 federal elections by building on a system created by OpenSecrets to measure dark money in 2020. This approach included an examination of spending reported to the FEC by groups without disclosed donors, TV ad data from research conducted in partnership with the Wesleyan Media Project using Vivvix CMAG data, and online ad data from major platforms. Spending totals were obtained directly from Snap and X, then analyzed by the Brennan Center; spending totals for social media platforms affiliated with Meta and Google were provided by OpenSecrets, then analyzed by the Brennan Center. OpenSecrets’ viewpoint coding system was used for any groups that reported independent expenditures or electioneering communications to the FEC. Some dark money groups report ad spending to the FEC. To avoid double counting the amounts reported to the FEC, this analysis followed a methodology similar to the one applied by OpenSecrets in 2020: Both online and TV ad spending were combined into a total figure for each group, which was then compared against the FEC-reported spending. Only the larger of the two amounts was used.

Anna Massoglia is an investigative analyst, writer, and editor tracking money and influence in politics. She serves as an independent advisor and contributing analyst to multiple newsrooms, academic institutions, and nonprofits. Her work focuses on political finance, foreign influence, government transparency, and accountability. Massoglia has been widely cited by policymakers and featured on The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and CNN. Previously, Massoglia was the editorial and investigations manager at OpenSecrets. She holds degrees in political science and psychology from North Carolina State University and a JD from the University of the District of Columbia School of Law.