The bigger picture. Federal lobbying alone hit a record $4.4 billion in 2024.[1] On top of that, the 2024 federal election cycle ran to about $15.9 billion in combined campaign and outside spending[2] — including a record $4.5 billion in outside spending by super PACs and dark-money groups.[3] Annualized across the two-year cycle, total federal political spending averages roughly $12 billion a year, or about $45 per US adult, per year.[4]
The 8 organizations above account for roughly $460 million of that combined annual political activity — about 4% of the annualized federal total, concentrated in 8 entities. They punch far above their weight because they're persistent, organized, well-staffed, and have direct access to legislators most citizens never meet.
Out-spending them individually puts citizen pledgers in the same room as the most concentrated single sources of policy influence in the country. Out-spending all 8 combined takes about 9.2 million people pledging $50 a year — roughly 3.5% of US adults.
Each organization's total reflects three categories of federal political activity as tracked by OpenSecrets and the FEC:
For AIPAC specifically: most of the $95M total is election spending — roughly $51.8M in PAC contributions to candidates and $37.9M in outside spending through the United Democracy Project super PAC. AIPAC's separate federal lobbying disclosure is small by comparison; we've included it in the same combined-total methodology to keep the chart apples-to-apples with the other organizations.
These categories do not include state-level spending, dark-money channels that don't disclose, or in-kind activity (events, staff hours, op-eds, etc.). The real political footprint of each organization is therefore at least the figure shown — likely higher.