Mitt Romney wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination with a good bit of help from Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting him. But just how big a role has outside spending overall played in the election so far?

In fact, the amount of spending by outside groups has grown dramatically since previous elections, and independent expenditures in particular — messages that explicitly call for the election or defeat of a candidate — are increasingly the preferred vehicle. Outside spending in all its forms has doubled since 2008, but independent expenditures have more than tripled.

In 2004 and 2008, electioneering communications — essentially issue ads that refer to a candidate without asking voters to elect or defeat him/her, and are broadcast within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election — were key components of outside spending. This time around, though, there’s less being spent on this subset of issue ads in absolute terms; as a percentage of all outside spending, the drop is even more pronounced. That could be because the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and SpeechNow.org v. FEC court cases eliminated restrictions on the types of funds that can be used for independent expenditures, possibly reducing the appeal of the less direct electioneering communications; there’s also legal uncertainty about disclosure requirements for donors.

The third type of outside spending that’s reported to the Federal Election Commission, member communications, includes messages from groups to only their members and can advocate for or against candidates. Often used by labor unions, they have been important at this stage in presidential races with Democratic primary competition (1992, 2000, 2004, 2008) but not in other years.

Why is there mostly blank space on the chart above for earlier cycles, such as those of the 1990s? Mostly because, while there was similar spending, it didn’t fit into the specific definitions we’re now using, such as “electioneering communications.”

Here, for example, is the same chart with two additions: the total raised in party “soft money” by the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee during comparable portions of election cycles in the ’90s, as well as spending by federally focused 527 organizations — named for a provision of the tax code — through the same period in later cycles.

Soft money included unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, unions and other groups directly to the parties, which they used largely for issue ads. Party soft money was outlawed by the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. After it became law, 527s and other groups filled the hole with similar expenditures. But the spending wasn’t disclosed under the same rubric that’s used now, so comparisons with more recent data are imprecise.

Hitting ‘Em Hard

Still, it may be the focus of the spending, rather than the overall level of activity, that is most different this cycle. For the first time in recent history, direct independent expenditures — “vote for” this candidate, or “defeat” that one — represent a majority of all outside spending.

The following chart shows who’s doing this spending, according to the type of organization, through April of this year.

So far the vast majority of this spending has been done by super PACs — the new creatures resulting from the SpeechNow court decision that can use unlimited funds from nearly any source to pay for ads, as long as they make no contributions to candidates or parties.

Much of this early spending was focused on the Republican presidential primaries. Each of the major candidates had one or more super PACs backing him, and for the Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum campaigns, these groups played a substantial role.

The chart below shows spending by the candidates compared with spending by their super PAC supporters. Most of the independent expenditures were for messages attacking opponents. The financial advantage maintained throughout the primary race by both the Romney campaign and the pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, and the focus on attacking opponents, is clear in the chart below. Independent expenditures against both Gingrich and Santorum (largely by Restore Our Future) either approached or surpassed the spending of the campaigns themselves, something not seen on a remotely similar scale in previous presidential campaigns. Mind the Gap A major caveat, though: We don’t know what we don’t know. Political activity that isn’t reported is necessarily omitted from our calculations. Unfortunately, we can’t see all the outside spending in an election cycle, even when it’s right there on TV. That’s because there’s a disclosure gap for issue ads — the ubiquitous messages that typically end with a plea along the lines of “Call Senator Smith and tell him to stop raising taxes” or some other message. Broadcast ads of this type — many of which are run by 501(c) organizations that don’t disclose their donors — become reportable electioneering communications only when they air close to an election and are targeted to the voters who are about to go to the polls. Otherwise, though, they aren’t reported at all beyond vague references in tax forms filed months or years after the election. The only way to know what’s happening is to track the ads themselves, either by examining the public files at individual TV stations (a labor-intensive process that could be made easier by new rules the Federal Communications Commission has approved) or by purchasing tracking data that estimates the cost of ads based on when and where they appear, as the Wesleyan Media Project has done in order to look for campaign spending related to the presidential general election. By merging an early Wesleyan tally of spending with actual disclosure reports, we can estimate what proportion of spending escapes disclosure altogether. Here is a breakdown of the spending by a dozen major groups alongside the spending that was required to be reported to election officials (amounts are in millions of dollars). Less than one-third of all general election presidential ad spending by these groups was actually disclosed. Another way of putting it: More than two-thirds of the “air war” currently under way is coming from the equivalent of predator drones or stealth bombers flying under outdated radar designed to identify an earlier generation of spender. The disclosure gap very likely will grow this cycle: Any presidential issue ads run now remain outside the reporting requirements until 30 days before the first nominating convention, which is the Republican event beginning Aug. 27.



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About The Author Prior to joining the Center in 2011, Bob spent thirty years on the Staff of the U.S. Federal Election Commission, developing and promoting disclosure. He has served as the Commission's Statistician, its Press Officer, and as a special assistant working to redesign the disclosure process. A graduate of Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Bob has written extensively on campaign finance, political parties, and interest groups, and is co-editor of <i>After the Revolution: PACs Lobbies, and the Republican Congress, and Risky Business?: PAC Decision-making in Congressional Elections</i>. You can follow Bob on Twitter at @rbiersack Follow Bob Biersack

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