Outside spending enabled by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision surpassed $840 million this election season, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Super PACs and nonprofits have lavished the bulk of these funds on Mitt Romney and Republican candidates.

Just 858 individuals who contributed at least $50,000 each comprised 60 percent of all the money collected by super PACs, with the top 149 donors raising $290 million. The money overwhelmingly went to produce negative ads, which ate up 88 percent of pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future’s funds, and 95 percent of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads expenditures. Pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA, while far outspent by its right-wing counterparts, spent 100 percent of its $57 million on negative ads.

Nonprofit organizations also played a huge part, with GOP nonprofits outspending Democratic ones by more than 8 to 1. These nonprofits, which are allowed to keep their donors secret, injected more than $245 million in so-called “dark money” into the election.

Romney heavily drew from wealthy donors, while the Obama campaign has been buoyed by grassroots supporters. 34 percent of the Obama campaign’s donations came from individuals who gave $200 or less, while they donated just 18 percent of Romney’s funds.

But super PACs have helped the Romney campaign overcome Obama’s grassroots fundraising, as Brad Smith, Republican lawyer and former chairman of the FEC openly admitted:

[Super PACs] have helped to level the playing field between Romney and Obama, whereas otherwise Obama’s spending advantage would have been substantial.

Should Romney win the election, he will be deeply beholden to these large donors. A ThinkProgress analysis identified 8 of Romney’s most generous supporters, all of whom work in either finance or the energy industry.

Citizens United has also given Romney a boost by loosening up the rules preventing employers from directly talking to employees about politics. Many conservative groups and business owners are taking advantage of this new flexibility by pressuring employees into contributing to Romney’s campaign or warning them that their jobs are in jeopardy if Obama wins.

Bloomberg’s Francis Wilkinson reports that, despite the massive influx of money seeking to buy the White House for Mitt Romney in the wake of Citizens United, President Obama is in a stronger than expected position. This is because, dollar for dollar, the relatively small donations that fund Obama’s campaign can buy significantly more television real estate than multi-million dollar efforts to elect Romney funded by Republican billionaires:

Due to a surviving remnant of campaign finance regulation, television stations are required to offer candidates advertising time at the “lowest unit rate.” They are not required to do the same for super-PACs or political parties. . . .

The Obama campaign (excluding super-Pacs and the party) entered September with about $88 million compared with about $50 million for the Romney campaign (ditto on the exclusions). So almost all of the pro-Obama money — $88 million of $101 million — is eligible for lowest unit rate while less than one third of the pro-Romney money — $50 million of $165 million — is. In recent months, television rates for super-PACs have cost several times — sometimes even five or six times — the rate paid by candidates. As the election nears, station inventory contracts and prices rise for candidates, that differential will shrink. But super-PACs will still probably pay double or more what candidates pay for advertising time.

So the good news for Obama is the dollar he raises from an auto worker in Detroit could be worth as much as five or six dollars from Romney billionaires like Sheldon Adelson or Charles and David Koch. The bad news for Obama is that Adelson is worth more than the gross domestic product of 23 nations put together. So Adelson can effortlessly toss off $10 million checks to support Mitt Romney, while Obama must endure the far more painstaking process of raising money from hundreds of Americans contributing far, far less.

On its website, Freedom PAC says its top priority is electing Rep. Connie Mack IV (R-FL) to the U.S. Senate this November. And with billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson bankrolling the effort, it has just launched a major new ad buy, lauding Mack as a tax-cutter.

Though Adelson said in April that he would make his future contributions through secretive 501(c)(4) to avoid having his multi-million dollar donations publicly disclosed, in June he donated $1 million to Freedom PAC. That contribution represents the lion’s share of the roughly $1.1 million the super PAC has reported raising to date. With his largess, the group reported a $997,500 ad buy Tuesday in support of Mack.

The ad — titled “Proud” — says Mack would be a “conservative senator for change” and would back “less taxes [sic], less spending, and more jobs.” Indeed Mack has signed Grover Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes for any reason, ever. Mack has also endorsed Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan — who have promised more tax cuts for the rich — as “America’s comeback team.”

Thanks to Citizens United and subsequent court rulings, billionaires like Adelson can now spend as much as they have to fund “independent expenditures” through super PACs — allowing them to completely circumvent the $2,500-per-election individual contribution limit for donations to federal candidates. Adelson’s now-legal attempts to buy the presidency and buy congressional seats like this one have so far cost him and his wife more than $42 million already this cycle.

But if the controversial billionaire gets his way, he stands to get back that and much more. By electing Mitt Romney and a supportive Senate majority with anti-tax Republicans like Mack, Adelson could save $2.3 billion in taxes.

Watch the spot:

Robert Mercer, the millionaire hedge-fund manager has been a consistent funder of right wing causes. In recent years, the co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies has bankrolled an Islamaphobic effort to stop a Muslim Community Center in New York City, given $1 million each to the pro-Mitt Romney Restore Our Future super PAC and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, and spent $200,000 on ads against Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), an advocate for more regulation of hedge funds. Now, public disclosure forms reveal he is the main benefactor for a new super PAC helping to elect New York Republican House candidate Randy Altschuler.

Prosperity First Inc. registered in April as a super PAC and reported on its July quarterly report that it had raised $635,500 in its first three months in operation. Of that, a whopping $500,000 came from Mercer. Until this weekend, it was unclear what Prosperity First would do with the money. Friday, the group reported its first $273,472 independent expenditure — an ad supporting Altschuler. This expenditure — the vast majority of which was funded by Mercer — is in addition to a pair of $2,500 contributions directly from the hedge-fund millionaire to Altschuler’s official campaign. In the post-Citizens United world, wealthy donors like Mercer can legally circumvent the legal limits and attempt to buy elections for their favorite candidates.

Why would Mercer spend so much to elect this candidate? After narrowly losing in 2010, Altschuler is again challenging Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY). One key difference between the two candidates is their view on Wall Street regulation: Bishop voted for the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (commonly known as Dodd-Frank), while Altschuler blasted the law as a “flawed piece of legislation” that would “kill jobs and shrink tax revenues for New York State.” Renaissance Technologies did not much like the bill’s regulations for hedge funds — the company has spent over $1 million since the start of 2010 on federal lobbying including a significant focus on Dodd-Frank’s hedge-fund provisions.

Altschuler promises that if elected, he would “roll out the red carpet” for businesses like Renaissance Technologies, instead of “red tape.” He says he will make the elimination of what he calls “job-killing government regulations” a priority. Altschuler’s let-business-do-whatever-it-wants approach would probably be good for the bottom line for hedge-fund millionaires like Mercer — though they would likely not be so good for consumers anxious to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial sector meltdown. For a person who earns $125 million in one year, the Supreme Court’s effective elimination of campaign finance limits may have made buying a House seat — or several — a legal and doable proposition.

59 days out from the presidential election, outside groups have already spent more on political ads than the total amount they spent during the 2008 election cycle. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that super PACs, non-profits and other outside groups have poured about $306.2 million into this election cycle as of September 5, outpacing the 2008 total of $301.6 million. This massive sum does not even take into account “issue ads” by political non-profits who have spent tens of millions of dollars this cycle. Furthermore, the spending is expected to skyrocket, as these groups traditionally unleash most of their funds in the short period between the conventions and Election Day.

The campaign finance landscape, of course, is very different today than it was four years ago; the 2010 Citizens United ruling gave the green light to corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money, while the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decided Wednesday that disclosure of these unlimited funds could be banned if the corporations find the regulations too onerous.

The consequences are obvious. Wall Street is poised to reach an all-time high of election spending, with 60 percent of financial sector donations going to Republicans. Conservative super PACs have far outstripped their Democratic counterparts.

As a stark reminder of the dominance Republicans have achieved in election spending since the Supreme Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United, two anti-Obama groups spent a combined total of about $10 million per week to buy the White House for Mitt Romney during the later part of last month. The Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and Romney super PAC Restore Our Future spent about $23.4 million during the second half of August — outspending pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action nearly 10 to 1.

This flood of Republican spending matches the post-Citizens United trend of increased Republican dominance of the airwaves:

Conservative super PACs have far outpaced their liberal counterparts in 2012, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. Liberal super PACs spent a total of $31.1 million through the end of July while conservatives spent $137.1 million. In spite of modest gains in liberal super PAC spending, conservative groups have kept a steady lead. Conservative superPACs spent $27 million in July alone, nearly as much as the total amount spent by liberals.

The analysis also found that the top conservative SuperPACs, Restore Our Future and American Crossroads, rely heavily on funding from Wall Street and the chemical industry. The top liberal super PAC, Priorities USA, received most of its donations — $5.1 million — from the entertainment industry. In contrast, Restore Our Future received $26.1 million, more than Priorities has raised total, from Wall Street.