Billionaires are increasingly putting money into political campaigns, according to a new analysis by union-represented reporting staff at the New York Times.
A team of four reporters analyzed campaign finance data, collected public records, and traced money that flowed through a network of political action committees. They found that in the 2024 federal election cycle, 300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated more than $3 billion to federal campaigns — 19% of all contributions.
Occasionally billionaires favored Democratic causes. In Washington, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his wife Connie spent $2.5 million in 2024 to defend a carbon cap program. But much more often billionaires backed Republican candidates and causes. For every dollar billionaires and their immediate families donated to a candidate or committee associated with Democrats, five dollars went to Republicans.
Usually, the top-spending candidate wins the election, the Times analysis showed.
Nowhere was that more on display in 2024 than in Montana, where 64 billionaires and 37 of their immediate family members donated about $47 million directly to the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Tim Sheehy, who defeated three-term Democratic incumbent Jon Tester. Now that he’s in the Senate, Sheehy is a staunch advocate of tax policies that benefit the wealthy and even cosponsored a bill to eliminate the estate tax.
Billionaires didn’t always have this much involvement: Before the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, the share of billionaire spending in federal elections was almost zero — 0.3%. Fourteen years later it was 19%.
In 2024, billionaires and their family members who donated to political campaigns gave $10 million each on average, roughly equivalent to 100,000 typical political donors.
