According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the 2012 presidential and congressional will be the most expensive on record. The Center predicts, based on data from 18 months of fundraising and spending, that the elections will cost $5.8 billion, an increase of 7 percent from the 2008 cost of $5.4 billion. A significant chunk of that money will be coming from outside groups, the transparency of which are as murky as swamp water.
These elections — presidential and congressional — are the first in which new, post-Citizens United rules will have been operative for the entire two-year campaign cycle. While outside spending groups existed in previous presidential election cycles — Americans Coming Together, for example, on the liberal side, and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for conservatives — that U.S. Supreme Court decision and other legal developments led to the proliferation of super PACs and the growth of other outside spending groups that don’t have to disclose their donors.
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