Alexandria, VA – Advertising costs for Sunday’s Super Bowl were more than double the amount of so-called “dark money” political spending in the 2014 election cycle, according to a comparison of data by the Center for Competitive Politics.
Groups that want more campaign finance regulations frequently hyped the role of “dark money” in the midterms. But political spending by groups that are not required to report the names and addresses of their supporters to the government amounted to less than $170 million over the two-year election cycle. That’s less than half of the $359 million spent on ads in Sunday’s Super Bowl, according to data from WalletHub.
“For all the claims of secret money ‘flooding’ politics in recent years, what has actually occurred is more like a trickle,” said Center for Competitive Politics President David Keating.
If every penny of “dark money” spent in 2013 and 2014 was redirected towards Super Bowl ads, the money would be gone by halftime.
But political ad spending totals are compiled for two years, not a few hours. Spending by groups that do not report the private information of their donors to the government accounted for only about five percent of federal campaign spending in 2014.
The Super Bowl provides another reminder that attention to “dark money” is greatly out of proportion with its actual impact. In the span of a single football game, advertisers spent more than double the amount of all so-called “dark money” spent in an entire two-year election cycle.
