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Data 2026-10-28 07:31 CDT · v0.8.18
Money in the Shadows: Outside Spending Since Citizens United
2010–2024, plus 2026 cycle-to-date (through 2026-10-28) · compiled 2026-10-28 · sources
On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that the government cannot limit independent political spending by corporations, unions, and other groups. Two months later, a federal appeals court decision (SpeechNow.org v. FEC) cleared the way for super PACs — committees that can raise and spend unlimited sums on elections, as long as they do not coordinate with candidates.
Fifteen years and seven election cycles later, the scale of that change is no longer abstract. This is the high-level picture, drawn from official Federal Election Commission filings and the leading independent estimates of undisclosed "dark money."
- 01 The bigger picture: the cost of elections since 2000 Start with the whole pie. The total cost of U.S. federal elections — every dollar spent by candidates, parties, and outside groups combined — was about $3.1 billion in 2000. By 2012 it had roughly doubled to $6.3 billion; by 2024 it reached $14.8 billion. The most expensive cycle on record is still 2020, at $15.1 billion — more than the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential cycles put together.
- 02 Outside spending exploded In 2012 — the first presidential election after the decision — outside groups reported $1.25 billion in independent expenditures to the FEC. By 2024 that figure had reached $4.4 billion, more than triple the 2012 total and a record for any cycle. Even the midterms tell the story: $788 million in 2014 grew to $2.3 billion in 2022.
- 03 Super PACs now dominate Super PACs — formally "independent-expenditure-only political committees" — did not exist before 2010. In 2012, their first presidential cycle, they reported $606.8 million in independent expenditures; by 2016 that had grown to $1.1 billion of the $1.6 billion total, and by 2024 to $2.7 billion, roughly six in every ten outside dollars. Add "hybrid" PACs (which keep a separate unlimited account) and the two vehicles created in Citizens United's wake made up nearly $4.1 billion of the $4.4 billion spent in 2024.
- 04 The 2026 cycle is under way The 2026 midterms are on pace to be the most expensive midterms for outside money on record. The FEC's latest official summary, published October 1 and covering the cycle through June 30, 2026, counts $643.4 million in independent expenditures — $529.6 million of it from super PACs. At the same point of the 2022 midterm cycle the figure was $419.4 million: 2026 is running about 53% ahead.
- 05 Texas: the costliest Senate race in the country Texas has drawn $449.8 million in outside spending on its federal races this cycle — about one in every six outside dollars spent nationally. Most of it, $358.3 million, went to a single contest: the U.S. Senate race, the most expensive outside-money race in the country by a wide margin (Ohio's Senate race is next at $293.0 million, then Michigan's at $238.7 million).
- 06 Follow Elon Musk's money The biggest reason for the imbalance in Texas is one donor. Elon Musk is the largest known individual contributor of the 2026 cycle. FEC filings through the quarter ending September 30 itemize $332.6 million in federal contributions from him since January 2025 — nearly all of it to Republican committees — plus another $36.3 million that his America PAC reported as memo entries. About $272 million of it came in July, August and September alone. That already approaches the roughly $290 million he spent in the entire 2024 presidential cycle.
- 07 The money got darker Not all of that spending is traceable to a donor. "Dark money" refers to spending by groups — typically 501(c)(4) "social welfare" nonprofits and trade associations — that are not required to disclose who funds them.
- 08 Does the money win? Outside spending is not spread evenly across the map. It pours into a handful of races and ignores the rest. Of the 104 U.S. Senate races held in 2020, 2022 and 2024, fewer than half drew even $1 million of it, and 42 drew almost none at all.
- 09 What that does not mean It would be a mistake to read the chart above as proof that outside money does not work. The causation runs the other way. Money floods a race because it is close, so the races that appear here are, almost by definition, the ones decided by a few points. The safe seats — where a well-funded incumbent faces no serious threat and no super PAC bothers to spend — never enter the sample at all.
- 10 What this is, and isn't This is the "high points" view: total outside spending, the rise of super PACs, and the growth of undisclosed money, cycle by cycle. Beyond the Senate money-versus-outcome comparison and the 2026 Texas and Musk spotlights, it does not yet break down spending by committee, donor, or party nationally — that detail is coming. What the headline numbers already make clear is that the post-Citizens United era moved an enormous and growing share of federal campaign money outside the candidates' own committees, and a large and growing slice of it into the dark.