We had a great conference at Wesleyan University earlier this week (12/4 and 12/5).  The line-up of presentations is here.  What a fantastic group of scholars!

I presented some summary info on the amount of ads that aired in the 2016 election.  Here is one figure from the presentation, which shows the percentage of outside group-sponsored ads by week that were from full disclosure groups.  I show this for the past two presidential elections and for the last three congressional cycles.  By full disclosure, I mean groups that are not considered “dark money” groups.  There are a lot of great inferences in the figure, but one important inference is that “dark money” was less prevalent in 2016 than in 2014 or 2012.  Lots to consider in that…