Who is funding the 2024 presidential candidates?
How to access public records related to federal campaign financing
Which presidential candidate is receiving and spending the most campaign funds? Who are the biggest contributors to each campaign? Did [insert organization name of choice] disclose contributions to federal campaigns this election cycle?
These questions and more can be answered by looking at data reported by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), an independent government regulatory agency whose mission is “administering and enforcing the federal campaign finance law”. The FEC oversees campaign finance processes for U.S. House and Senate seats, the Presidency, and the Vice Presidency.
Campaign finance receipts and disbursements must be reported to the FEC, and the FEC is required to make those reports available as public records within 48 hours of receipt. This includes posting the information on the FEC website and making it available in-person at the FEC Public Records office in Washington, D.C. (See: Accessing campaign finance information on the FEC’s website.)
Today, I will show a few ways to access FEC data and research campaign financing. Let’s get started!
FEC Website
First, navigate to fec.gov. Select the “Campaign finance data” tab, then the “All data” option to access a broad overview of search options.
This takes you to a page that features several types of data and different ways to look for it. You can look at the money candidates are raising and what they’re spending, run candidate comparisons by state, browse candidate profiles, or search records for individual contributors. You can also browse other data categorized in the blue boxes at the bottom of the page.
Depending on which option you select, you will either be taken directly to a list of contributions, or you may first see some visual graphics synthesizing the data and need to click on options to see receipts/details to get to the list. Eventually, you’ll end up seeing something like this (to get here, I selected “All contributions over $2,000 under “Find contributions from specific individuals”):
Notice that on the left side, there are several filters you can use to narrow down the results to precisely what you want to see. You can also select entries to see details on individual contributions.
FEC Research Guides
It may seem like I’m giving a briefer overview than normal. That’s because the FEC has published several research guides that already do a good job of explaining how to research their public records (there are many ways to do this, and a lot of information is available). To review these, go back to the website header.
Under the “About” tab, click “Introduction to campaign finance and elections”. This entire page summarizes the basics of campaign finance data and regulations.
Under the research sections, select “Learn more about how to research public records”.
This takes you to a list of research guides. They explain what information you can access and how to do it. They provide a good foundation of how FEC databases are organized so that you can perform precise searches.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this post has provided you with insight into performing basic research on U.S. federal campaign financing.1 Let me know in the comments what you discover!
See you next month!
Keep in mind that the FEC deals with campaign financing that is required to be disclosed. Contributions are also subject to limits (see: FEC legal resources). This type of election spending is known as “hard money” (see the terminology section on the Wikipedia’s Campaign Finance page). The FEC does not provide visibility for other funding, such as dark money, that is not disclosed, but is intended to influence elections and campaigns (see this overview from OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit that covers election spending).