Who is financing campaigns and elections?
Using the FEC to obtain federal campaign finance data.
In Civics This Week: The money behind elections - a case study of abortion restrictions
As the 2022 midterm elections pick up speed, so are two other things: election fundraising efforts and discussions on hot-button topics for voters and candidates this cycle. State abortion legislations are high on the list for the latter.1 The Supreme Court is involved in two high-profile cases of state restrictions on abortion access. In early December the court allowed a Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in place during litigations.2 The court has also taken up a Mississippi abortion case that, if upheld, threatens to help overturn Roe v. Wade.
Where does this tie back to campaign financing? A recent NPR story highlighted the connection between the Supreme Court’s indicated support for harsher abortion restrictions and a dramatic increase in election fundraising by the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List. The organization (which has a candidate fund) has endorsed these candidates for the 2022 races. On the other side of this debate, Planned Parenthood’s action fund endorsed these candidates (a representative from this fund is briefly interviewed in the NPR story, as well).
Money influences political campaigns in the United States in many ways - from individual donations to campaigns to money from corporate PAC funds to ad campaigns financed by external advocacy groups (Open Secrets is a nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics - here, they provide a comprehensive overview of the various ways candidate thinking and action can be influenced. They also provide education on dark money3). Thus, it is important to develop an understanding of how a campaign is financed. This knowledge can increase our faith or distrust in a campaign and determine how we vote.
We can track information on campaign financing ourselves through a data tool from the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). Let’s give it a shot!
Using the FEC to track campaign financing
Created by Congress in 1974, the FEC is the major governmental source of information on federal campaign finances. It is an independent government agency whose mission is to “protect the integrity of the federal campaign finance process by providing transparency and fairly enforcing and administering federal campaign finance laws”. You’ve probably heard about the FEC a few times in the past several years, notably from the Citizens United vs. FEC Supreme Court case on campaign financing and free speech (see here as well). The FEC systems were also hacked after the 2013 government shutdown, causing major disruptions and security issues. Most recently, a vacant seat throughout much of 2020 prevented the FEC from taking up hundreds of cases related to election law enforcement.
The FEC website has three main sections:
The focus today is on finance data. The other two sections are helpful to look at for information on the kinds of requirements and laws that structure campaign financing. The legal resources section can be used to track statutes, court cases, and other topics related to FEC enforcement of campaign finance law. I recommend supplementing these latter sections with external research, as FEC.gov’s explanations can be difficult to understand at times (in my experience, anyway!).4
Let’s move on to FEC campaign finance data! You can access this section from the FEC’s homepage.
This section can be used to understand how money is raised and spent by campaigns in federal elections. Today we’re focusing on the question of raising money. Before searching for specifics, it’s helpful to browse the Raising: by the numbers section, which provides information on how much money is being raised by candidates in the 2022 midterm elections (you can use the drop-downs to look at other races, but be wary - they are finicky).
After the summary, there are two main ways to search for campaign finance data: you can look up recipients of money (a candidate or committee), or you can search by the contributor.
Let’s use the example of Susan B. Anthony List endorsements for 2022 election candidates. James Lankford (R-OK) is the first on this list. After typing in his name in the candidate search box, I get these results:
To get the candidate financing for the senate race, I’ll want to select the first result, which identifies Lankford as a candidate for the Senate. Please note that the “Families for James Lankford” result is the principal campaign committee for Lankford, whose receipts are included in the candidate data.
After clicking on Lankford’s candidate profile, we arrive at his financial summary. One interesting tool to look at on your own is the “Compare to opposing candidates”. For now, let’s go straight to the first section on the financial summary, “Total Raised” and click on “Browse receipts”, which will show financial data for 2021-2022 (you can change this criterion at a later point if you want).
Scrolling through (the results are automatically organized by receipt date), you will see important information including the contributor source name and the amount they gave. You might see some familiar corporation names. Some from the first few pages include Walmart and American Airlines PACs.5
Using the filters on the left, you can narrow by source name. Here are the results we get when we narrow by contributions made by Susan B. Anthony List Inc.
Sure enough, there are several results for contributions from the fund in 2021-2022 and sources earmarked by the fund (click on the Susan B. Anthony Candidate Fund to view their contributors). You can change the date filters and look back a few more years. Open Secrets used FEC data to conclude that Susan B. Anthony List is Lankford’s fourth top contributor from 2017-2022.
If you want to know more about money that goes towards Super PACs (which cannot donate directly to political candidates, but can raise an unlimited sum of money to advocate for or against a candidate), you can also look those up the same way we searched for Lankford. Super PACs and PACs must register with the FEC and report their spending.
The Women Speak Out PAC is a super PAC partnered with Susan B. Anthony List. Let’s compare their contributions with Planned Parenthood Votes, a super PAC affiliated with Planned Parenthood. Returning to the home page, we'll start by searching for the Women Speak Out profile. From their landing page, click “browse receipts” again to get the 2021-2022 results page. Then, add “Planned Parenthood Votes” on the left as a recipient to compare both super PACs at the same time. Here are the results (I also included 2019-2020 so we have a little more to look at):
I organized by largest to smallest donations and took a screenshot of every contribution that was over $1 million to either Super Pac. There are almost 4,000 results.
Pretty noticeable right away due to the name and number is Michael Bloomberg’s contribution of $4 million to Planned Parenthood Votes. You can search Bloomberg as a contributor to see other funds and campaigns he has donated to over the years. Under him is Richard Uihlein contributing $2 million to Women Speak Out (click the arrow on the right to see that he owns a company called Uline. See footnote for details).6 Same as Bloomberg, you can also search for his FEC contributor data. Finally, there is also a contribution from Susan B. Anthony List of $1.2 million. If you scroll down on the site, several more of their contributions are listed.
The campaign finance data tool can certainly be used to take a broader look at the election landscape, rather than focusing on a specific topic. One comparison search I like to use tracks data for the following recipients in 2021-2022:
Democratic National Committee (qualified party committee)
Priorities USA Action (one of the top Democratic super PACs)
Senate Leadership Fund (one of the top Republican super PACs)
Republican National Committee (qualified party committee)
I’m not a political or data analyst, but my reasoning behind this search is that using the official party committees and a major super PAC for both the Democratic and Republican parties will provide a baseline overview of partisan campaign financing. You can pick different organizations to track - I often add other PAC and super PAC funds.
Here’s what the results of this look like (organized by highest contributions):
I also like to narrow by contributions made on significant dates, such as when landmark legislation is about to be voted on or election days. For 2021, I found that a pretty interesting day to look at was January 6th:
In Conclusion
For many of us, understanding where money in political campaigns comes from influences who we support and vote for. Government information can help us draw some of these conclusions. If you decide to experiment with FEC data yourself, let me know what you find out! For more resources related to political campaigns and voting, check out my post from earlier this month. And if you enjoyed this post, send it on to some of your friends!
See you next week.
All screenshots were taken on 1/26/22.
This FiveThirtyEight feature did an interesting takedown on the complexity of American opinion on abortion and the way this issue can be perceived with varying degrees of priority by voters and candidates during election cycles.
Open Secrets published a report at the beginning of 2021 about dark money in the 2020 election spending. The report showed that more than $1 billion of dark money went into the 2020 elections, $88 million of which was direct election spending reported to the FEC. The report also pointed out that this was the first election cycle in many years where dark money was more beneficial for Democrats than it was for Republicans (though Democrats continued to push for stricter campaign finance laws).
Khan Academy has a solid introductory video to campaign finance. Open Secrets, which I mentioned earlier, uses FEC data to provide accessible tools, reports, and explanations on campaign financing.
Note that these are funds from these organizations’ PACs or affiliated owners and employees - corporations cannot directly contribute to campaigns. They can, however, contribute to Super PACs.
A few years ago Richard and his wife Liz broke the news when liberal media outlets published several pieces on their contributions to the GOP in the 2018 midterm elections. See coverage from the New York Times, “The Most Powerful Conservative Couple You’ve Never Heard Of”, and Politico, “The biggest Republic megadonor you’ve never heard of”. Just this week, The Daily Beast published an article on Richard Uihlein’s mega donations to right-wing extremist organizations and registered hate groups.