Methodology

Where the numbers come from

All campaign finance figures come from the Federal Election Commission, the government agency candidates are legally required to file with. We use the FEC’s public API. We do not estimate, model, or infer any dollar amount.

Two kinds of money, never mixed

Money given to a campaign and money spent abouta candidate are different things, and we keep them in separate sections. Contributions go to the campaign, which controls them. Independent expenditures are spent by outside groups — usually super PACs — who are legally barred from coordinating with the candidate. That money never appears in the candidate’s own filings.

This distinction matters more than it sounds. A member can look modestly funded while millions are spent on their race by groups they have no control over. Blending the two would misrepresent both.

Why we report percentages, not just totals

A large campaign and a small one can take similar dollar amounts from political action committees while depending on them to completely different degrees. We lead with the share of total fundraising that came from PACs, because that is the figure that answers “how much does this person rely on organized money?” The raw dollar amount is shown alongside it.

How we avoid double-counting

Independent expenditure records cannot simply be added up. Groups file 24-hour notices close to an election that are later restated in their regular reports, and amended filings sit alongside the originals they correct. Adding the rows naively inflates totals — in testing it also reversed the ranking of the two largest spenders in a race. We use the FEC’s own aggregated totals, which resolve this.

Every figure says which election it belongs to

Campaign finance data is organized by election, not by calendar year, and a member’s most recent completed election may be years apart from the outside spending on a different race. Every number on this site carries the election year it covers and the date its reporting period closed.

Why our totals may differ from a two-year cycle view

We report what a member raised for a whole election. For a representative that is two years. For a senator it is six, because a Senate term is six years and money raised across all of it went toward winning that seat.

The Commission’s own website opens on a single two-year cycle by default, so the same senator can show a much smaller figure there. Neither number is wrong; they measure different spans. Every figure on this site states the exact reporting period it covers, and the link on each profile opens the Commission’s page filtered to that same election and the same full period, so the two should agree line for line.

We chose the full-election figure because a two-year slice of a six-year term is arbitrary — it would show a senator’s fundraising in the years they were not running, and hide the money that actually won them the seat.

What we do not claim

We do not say that any donation caused any vote. A group giving money to a politician who already agreed with them is common and is not corruption. Where we show funding and voting together, we show them side by side and let you draw your own conclusion. We will never assert that a vote was bought.

We also cannot show you everything. Some political spending is legally permitted to stay anonymous and appears in no filing at all. Where that is likely to matter, we say so on the page rather than presenting an incomplete picture as a complete one.

When we are not sure, we publish nothing

If we cannot source a figure, it does not go on the site. Sections that are planned but unverified are left empty and labelled rather than filled with estimates. We would rather show you less than show you something we cannot stand behind.

If you think a number here is wrong, please tell us. Corrections are published on our corrections page.

Who is covered

We currently hold funding records for 532 members — 98 in the Senate and 434 in the House, including 6 non-voting delegates from the District of Columbia and the territories.

3 sitting members are absent: Glenn Ivey, Keith Self, Laura Gillen. The Federal Election Commission returns no financial totals under the candidate identifier on record for each of them. Rather than publish an empty profile, we leave them out and say so here.