Phil Stafford/<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&searchterm=justin+bieber&search_group=#id=103438697&src=3045df60c68b34188aefda5cbe10add4-1-7">Shutterstock</a> (Bieber); Loskutnikov/<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&searchterm=pile+cash&search_group=&orient=&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&commercial_ok=&color=&show_color_wheel=1#id=81124306&src=abcbd816393dabef013f6fceb7c52315-1-4">Shutterstock</a> (money)
We’re about to wrap up the most expensive election in US history—and also the first presidential election awash in unrestricted super-PAC cash and dark-money. Some stats (read on, Bieber fans):
1. Estimated amount of disclosed spending in the 2012 election: $6 billion
2. Amount of dark money (money with no donor disclosure) spent in the 2008 election: $70 million
Minimum amount of dark money known to have been spent on the 2012 election: $213 million
3. Amount super-PACs, dark money groups, and other outside groups spent in October: $526 million
4. Percentage of all super-PAC money from just 163 people who gave $500,000 or more: 70 percent
5. Percentage of outside spending coming from disclosed donors in 2004: 96.5 percent
Percentage in 2012: 40.5 percent
6. Amount the Koch brothers are known to have donated to candidates and parties in 2012: $411,000
Amount of dark money they have pledged to spent to defeat Barack Obama: $60 milion
7. Percentage of dark money spent on federal elections that went to electing Republicans and defeating Democrats: 80 percent
8. Percentage of the 1 million-plus ads run by the Obama and Romney campaigns and their allies between April and October that were negative: 87 percent
9. Number of news segments about outside spending groups on Milwaukee stations in the two weeks before Wisconsin’s June recall election: 0
Number of news segments about Justin Bieber during that time: 53
