Date of Graduation

5-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Advisor(s)

John Davenport

Abstract

The 2024 U.S. federal elections will have (nominally) been the most expensive in American history1 . It is hardly the first record-setting election most Americans will have seen: per OpenSecrets, each presidential cycle (that is, years in which the presidency has been on the ballot) has been nominally more expensive than the last dating back the 2000 cycle. When adjusted for inflation, the 2020 federal elections are estimated to have cost noticeably more than 2024, at $18.3 billion and $15.8 billion in inflation-adjusted terms respectively. One form of spending, however, reached an unmistakable peak in the 2024 cycle: outside groups, primarily Super PACs, are estimated to have spent over $5 billion on this year’s federal elections, a figure that would dwarf the previous record of $3.4 billion, set only four years prior in 2020. Such mammoth figures are a relative novelty. As recently as 2008, federal campaign spending totaled under $570 million2

. Adjusted for inflation3

, that amount is over $150 million less than

the amount raised by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris alone4

. Furthermore, in 2008, the now-main vessel for outside spending did not even exist: Super PACs, officially “independent-expenditure only political action committees”5

, came about as a result of two successive court decisions in 2010, namely the Supreme Court Case Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee (FEC), henceforth referred to as Citizens United, and the Appeals Circuit case Speechnow.org v. FEC, henceforth referred to as Speechnow.

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