Between December 2024 and December 2025, approximately $280 million in untraceable funds flooded federal political committees, campaign finance records show. Roughly $150 million of that sum came from organizations aligned with the Republican Party. Of the remainder, $53 million came from industry groups and centrist committees, while just $75 million was contributed by organizations aligned with the Democratic Party. If current trends persist, Republicans would receive more support from anonymous donors for the first time since 2018.

While this trend holding would represent a departure from recent norms, Republican-aligned groups dominated dark money spending in the cycles immediately following Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court decision that created dark money as we know it. 

Most of the dark money that entered federal elections in the year following the 2024 presidential election came from just a handful of deep-pocketed groups. All told, the 10 largest anonymously funded donor groups accounted for more than 60% of the dark money that has entered federal elections so far this cycle.

One Nation, for instance, cut a $35.3 million check to the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund. American Prosperity Alliance, a nonprofit organization previously linked to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), poured $30.7 million into a collection of conservative political committees. AIPAC’s advocacy arm, meanwhile, pumped $30 million into its allied United Democracy Project. Top liberal committees such as Majority Forward and Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, meanwhile, donated just $19.2 million and $6.6 million, respectively, into political committees.

Perennial boogeymen decried by the Left and Right alike appear in the data, too. 

The North Fund and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, previously united by their shared relationship with Arabella Advisors and now joined by their ties to Sunflower Services, have long been two of the premier vehicles for dark money on the Left. Conservatives have accused the latter of being a vehicle for foreign influence, given the large amounts of funds it receives from Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss. Representatives for Wyss and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, however, maintain that they comply with all applicable laws.

The duo of left-of-center nonprofit groups collectively gave about $1.3 million to Your Community PAC, a super PAC that spent about $740,000 working to unseat Rep. Matthew Van Epps (R-TN) in a hotly contested December 2025 special election. 

Meanwhile, nonprofit organizations linked to Koch Industries, namely the advocacy arm of Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together, and its affiliated Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, contributed $8.6 million to a variety of committees. 

Those on the Left have long criticized the influence of the Koch network for funding climate change denialism while working to undercut environmental protections and public transit expansions.

All these donor organizations have one thing in common, they’re registered with the IRS as 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations. 501(c)(4)s occupy a controversial space in the world of campaign finance as they do not need to disclose their donations to the public but are allowed to spend considerable funds on political activities — including donations to super PACs. 

Some argue this is problematic because super PACs were designed with transparency in mind. Super PACs report all their donors to the FEC. Donors seeking to remain anonymous, however, can use 501(c)(4)s as intermediaries to conceal their activity. A corporation, for instance, can cut a check to a 501(c)(4) with the understanding that the 501(c)(4) would then forward the funds to a super PAC. When the super PAC files its disclosures, the 501(c)(4) shows up among the donors, not the original source of the funds.

This allows donors to reap all the benefits associated with giving money to powerful politicians while incurring none of the public blowback that comes from doing so on the books.

Right to anonymous giving

Some, however, argue that donors have a right to privacy that 501(c)(4)s serve to protect.

“Americans have a right to anonymous political giving, to a certain extent, especially when political violence is becoming all too common, so it’s not surprising that anonymous contributions remain a big part of political money flows, or that they are trending towards Republicans for the first time in years,” Capital Research Center investigative researcher Parker Thayer told the Washington Examiner. “This reversal of trends will probably rattle Democratic operatives that have long counted on their dominance in the ‘dark money’ world to mobilize voters and fund campaigns. It will probably feel rather like losing a treasured security blanket for them.”

Others maintain that the existence of dark money deprives the public of the right to know who is spending money in elections.

“The flow of dark money into elections is very troubling. It means that unknown funders are attempting to sway voters,” Craig Holman, a veteran campaign finance lobbyist at Public Citizen, told the Washington Examiner. “A key pillar of our electoral process is that voters know who is paying for campaign ads. That knowledge gives the electorate a chance to evaluate the merits of the deluge of campaign messages we see and hear on TV, radio, newspapers, and social media. That knowledge also gives the electorate a chance to offset Big Money in politics. Those who want to hide in the shadows should not be attempting to influence election outcomes.”

He continued: “Dark money has always been a bipartisan problem. It appears to be a growing problem as more and more billionaires and wealthy entities seek to shape public policies in their own interests.”

Dark money has historically been a touchy subject for Democrats. While anonymous funding has given the party an edge in close elections, many on the Left have consistently denounced it as a threat to democracy. A sort of civil war has long been ongoing within the party as to whether they should stick to their principles and avoid anonymous donations or if they need to use dark money to maintain a level playing field with Republicans.

“There certainly was this sort of internal battle, that I would say I at least perceived, post-Citizens United where Obama in particular and several other people on the Left just did not like the post-Citizens United world, did not want to embrace the tools that it made available to them,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington vice president for research and data Robert Maguire told the Washington Examiner. “It seems that the people who were, I would say, in the ‘fight fire with fire’ camp, decided or won the debate. That doesn’t mean, though, that there hasn’t been this really strong distaste for these tools among a large part of the Left.”

The reversal of fortunes on this front could give the Left an opportunity to cast the GOP as the party of oligarchs and capital, despite its ongoing surge in blue-collar support. That said, Republicans leading the count now is no guarantee that they will stay ahead. 

“Most of the spending that happens, happens in the last three months of the election,” Maguire said. “So you’re going to see just massive amounts of money that have yet to be spent.”

Maguire pointed out that he wrote a blog post for OpenSecrets back in 2013 about how liberal dark money was dominating the 2014 midterm elections and that, by the time everything was said and done, GOP-aligned groups actually came out on top.

501(c)(4) groups aren’t the only vectors for anonymous funds to enter politics. Trade associations, which typically register with the IRS as 501(c)(6) organizations, also lack a legal requirement to report their donors and have the ability to cut checks to political committees. The vast majority of the over $50 million in dark money that has come from industry groups since December 2024 has come from trade associations such as these.

Among the top industry-related dark money spenders in the lead up to the 2026 midterm elections have been the American Petroleum Institute, the crypto-focused Solana Institute, the National Community Pharmacist Association, the Advanced Medical Technology Association, PhRMA, and the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association.

Interestingly, PhRMA and the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association — which represent the rival interests of pharmaceutical manufacturers and pharmacy benefit managers — each spent just over $1 million contributing to federal political committees.

For its analysis, the Washington Examiner compiled a list of every 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) organization that made at least $10,000 in contributions in the year following December 2024 using reams of data provided by the FEC. To categorize groups as conservative or liberal, the Washington Examiner relied on their giving history and the language on their websites. 

What factors are at play?

A number of factors could be behind the surge in wealthy anonymous donors backing the GOP.

“One thing in particular that I’ve got my eye on is the fact that corporations seem to be diving into politics in a way that they haven’t in a long time,” Maguire said. “It feels like there is a new sort of era beginning where they’re seeing that their way to influence Washington more than ever is through money. The thing about dark money that’s convenient for them … is that they have a vehicle for giving massive amounts of money where the people who are benefiting from that dark money know exactly who is giving to the cause, but the public doesn’t.”

This, according to Maguire, allows corporations and other wealthy donors to evade publicly wading into a touchy political environment while privately reaping the benefits of doing so.

The dark money disadvantage is just one piece of a broader campaign finance story that looks bleak for Democrats. 

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On the party side, the Republican National Committee began the year with $100 million more in the bank than the Democratic National Committee. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, commands a super PAC with $304 million in waiting, with no obvious Democratic equivalent. A New York Times analysis found that Republicans possess a $550 million edge over Democrats when accounting for all federal accounts held by the main party operations. 

“Perhaps the Democratic donors’ dark money machines are growing less powerful, or maybe dark money donors are pragmatically trying to draw closer to the party currently in power,” Thayer said, qualifying his statement by saying that it’s hard to know what the shift means at this point. “There are a lot of possible explanations, but they all revolve around the axiom that big money will be involved in politics as long as big government is involved in money, and to a like degree.”