Political Science: Political Finance

Great source for data and analysis on campaign finance at the federal level. Covers contributions to candidates and PACs; campaign spending by outside groups; lobbying and interest groups; personal finances of politicians and the revolving door of politicians to lobbyists; political ad buys; and more. From the Center for Responsive Politics. 1998+ Bulk data freely available for non-commercial use.

Data and reports on money and spending in state-level politics. Covers campaign finance donations, spending by outside groups, and spending on ballot measures for all 50 states. You can view national or state overviews of spending; get breakdowns by district, candidate, party, industry, incumbency status, and more. The National Institute on Money in State Politics cleans, verified, and standardizes the data. Data can be exported in CSV, XML, or JSON. 1988+

Download itemized and trend data and filings for contributions and disbursements by/for candidates, committees, PACs, and independent expenditures. Bulk downloads of detailed data are available.

A meta-dataset project that aggregates numerous other datasets related to state policy making (including several on this page). Includes more than nine-hundred variables, with observations across the 50 states (across the period 1900 – 2016). These variables represent policy outputs or political, social, or economic factors that may influence policy differences across the states. Data in Excel, .csv, and Stata formats as well as an R package.

An ongoing research project and data compendium that provides data in Excel format on myriad public policies (more than 200 in all) for all 50 states. Codebook provides information on how to use these data to construct indices of policy ideology. The data are available biennially 2000-2016 (although some policies are available back to the 1930s or 50s).

Data from Caughey and Warshaw's 2016 AJPS article. Data on 148 policies covering a variety of issue areas (economic, social, and racial) collected over eight decades (1936–2014), producing the first yearly measure of the policy liberalism of U.S. states to allow the study of policy change. Data on policies and state policy liberalism scores in .csv format.

Project of Temple University monitoring health laws in each of the fifty states. “Health” is defined broadly and includes topics such as abortion, recreational marijuana, fair housing protections, minimum wage laws, cell phone use while driving, state pre-emption, etc. There are associated maps, reports, and coded datasets of laws/regulations (in Excel) for each topic.

Census Bureau data from multiple surveys covering subnational governmental organization and powers, government employment and payroll, state and local government finances and public pensions, and tax revenues, 1992–present. Data from earlier surveys is available through ICPSR series 5 and series 12.

Census Bureau bulk data files from various surveys of state and local government (see descriptions above). Also includes Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR) data on the geographic distribution of federal spending (1983-2010). Most cover multiple decades to around 2008.

Data from surveys conducted by the International City/County Management Association. Survey topics include service provision & delivery, economic development, government structure, technology, labor-management relations, and e-government. ICMA’s database of local governments includes all U.S. cities, towns, townships, villages, and boroughs with a population of 2,500 or greater and all counties. Years vary; longitudinal data are available from surveys that are conducted on a regular schedule. Also see DSS Study No. 3029 for the Economic Development Full National and Regional Datasets -- 1999, 2004, 2009.

Index ranking the 50 states on their public policies affecting individual economic and social freedom. Data for 2001-11 available for download in Excel.

Database of economic development subsidies and other forms of government financial assistance to business primarily at the state level (though includes some large cities and some federal). Data available in CSV or XML; dates vary, but generally mid-2000s to present.

Details the official spending done by the House of Representatives, including lawmakers’ offices, committee offices, and administrative offices, using the official House Statement of Disbursements (see below). One file contains summary information for each office and category of spending, and the other file contains details of each recipient of office spending and its purpose. Note that the data has not been standardized (meaning that "AT&T" might also appear as "A.T.&T."). Quarterly files from 2009-present in .csv. A single file containing 2009-2018 is also available.

Quarterly report on expenditures by the House, including salaries of staffers and expenses by committees and Members' offices. Since 2009, the House has published disbursements online in .csv format.

"Financial Disclosure Reports include information about the source, type, amount, or value of the incomes of Members, officers, certain employees of the U.S. House of Representatives and related offices, and candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives." 2007–present.

Semi-annual report detailing expenditures by the Senate, including salaries of officers and employees and spending by committees and Members' offices.

Financial disclosures by Senators and candidates since January 1, 2012. Senator reports are available until six years after the individual ceases to be a Member. Candidate reports are available for one year after the individual is no longer a candidate.

Click on Gift/Rule Travel tab. Option to search or download entire database. Senate rules state that "the information must be maintained for a period not longer than four years after receiving the information."

Information on Congressional salaries, trips, financial disclosures, foreign gifts, earmarks, and more. Salary data on members and staffers from 2000-present; data on privately financed trips from 2000-present; financial disclosures from 2001-present; foreign gifts from 1999-present; earmarks for fiscal years 2008-2010. Limited personal access with free registration.

Campaign finance project by Adam Bonica at Stanford as part of a project to ideologically map political elites, interest groups, and donors in the "political marketplace". "The resulting database contains over 130 million political contributions made by individuals and organizations to local, state, and federal elections spanning a period from 1979 to 2014. A corresponding database of candidates and committees provides additional information on state and federal elections." Data has been extensively cleaned, standardized, and geocoded. Requires free registration.

Nonpartisan research organization that connects data on campaign contributions in congressional elections, legislative votes by members of Congress, and which interest groups, companies, and organizations support and oppose key bills. You can also download their Federal Money and Politics Dataset of cleaned up FEC campaign contribution data for each cycle 2008-present (in CSV format). (There are also special editions for California and Wisconsin data.) It also provides an API for access to its data on interest group bill support/opposition.

Historical data on congressional and presidential election fundraising, expenditures, and party, interest group, and PAC spending. Tables and figures are in PDF and cover 1974-present. Many of these tables are available in Excel (with a slight time lag) from the Vital Statistics on Congress (see chapter 3 on Campaign Finance in Congressional Elections). CFI also produces also other reports as well as a useful Money in Politics Bibliography covering academic literature back to 2006.

The Campaign Finance Institute has compiled a database of state campaign finance laws covering every state, 1996-2018. There's a visualization tool allowing for easy comparison across key variables and the full database can be downloaded to access more than 500 variables per state-year.

Links to the official state agency websites for campaign finance, elections, and lobbyist disclosures. From Follow The Money.

The National Conference of State Legislatures compiles information on laws and regulations governing campaign finance in all 50 states. It has separate sections on contribution limits, independent expenditures, disclosure requirements, and public financing of elections. Mostly current with some coverage of previous years. Its database of campaign finance legislation goes back to 1999 and is searchable by year, state, type of legislation and status.

"USAspending.gov is the publicly accessible, searchable website mandated by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 to give the American public access to information on how their tax dollars are spent."

Project led by Steven Ballmer to provide a detailed description of federal, state, and local government revenue and spending categorized according to 4 broad constitutionally expressed purposes with associated data on outcomes. All data comes from official sources; generally 1980–present. Also includes the current year data in a detailed 10-K style report.

Scholarly project that parses Congressional lobbying disclosure reports to provide better coding and access and to link them to congressional bills and their sponsors. Larger queries can be downloaded through a public API and bulk downloads (more than 5000 reports) can be arranged by contacting the researchers.

Database of documents required to be filed by lobbyists under the Lobbying and Disclosure Act (LDA). Database can be searched or downloaded (by quarter), 1999-.

Online database to search lobbying filings back to 2011. Results can be downloaded to .csv, XML, or JSON.

Links to the official state agency websites for campaign finance, elections, and lobbyist disclosures. From Follow The Money.

The Center for Political Accountability tracks disclosure practices of corporate political spending of the top 300 companies in the S&P 500. It creates an annual index, the CPA-Zicklin Index, ranking companies' disclosure transparency. 2011+

Includes information about thousands of organizations involved in national politics, their organizational characteristics, and the activities they undertook in the pursuit of policy influence. This collection encompasses all organizations listed in the Washington Representatives directories for 1981, 1991, 2001, 2006, and 2011. These organizations have been classified into 96 categories based on the kinds of interests represented. Variables include organization name, membership category, founding year, and main objective, as well as number of lobbyists hired, number of amicus briefs filed, political action committee (PAC) donations made, and web-based lobbying activities.

Replication data for Maxwell Palmer and Benjamin Schneer, "Postpolitical Careers: How Politicians Capitalize on Public Office," The Journal of Politics 81, no. 2 (April 2019): 670-675. Covers more than 1200 former top office holders from 1992-2014 and codes whether they were paid lobbyists or served on boards of public corporations.

Database of Earmarks from a nonpartisan group. FY 2008-2010 currently available online for download in Excel.

Database of earmarks from the Office of Management and Budget covering FY2005, 2008, 2009, and 2010. Data is searchable and browseable, and can also be downloaded as a CSV.