Skip to content

Friday, Oct. 16, 2020

Do both major parties receive plenty of ‘dark money’ contributions?

Austin Tannenbaum, Gigafact
yes

"Dark money" refers to political contributions from groups that don't disclose their original donors. It's made possible by a 1980 campaign-finance loophole that allows donors to remain hidden if they haven't contributed to a particular political ad. Dark money skyrocketed after the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on independent political ads.

Between 2010 and 2020, Republicans took in $714 million in dark money, vs. $351 million for Democrats. Seven of the top 10 donors support Republicans. Big names include Crossroads GPS (R), Americans for Prosperity (R), and Majority Forward (D). Democrats received more dark money than Republicans in 2018 and are on track to receive more in 2020.

Last year, House Democrats passed a bill that would effectively ban dark money, but the Republican-led Senate blocked it.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.