Methodology & Data Sources

Data Sources

• Federal Election Commission (FEC): Bulk candidate and committee contribution data for the 2024 election cycle. Tracks PAC contributions to federal political candidates. Available at fec.gov.
• Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) database: Lobbying registration and activity reports filed by registered lobbyists with the Senate Office of Public Records, covering 2023–2024 activity. Available at lda.senate.gov.
• USAspending.gov (FPDS): Federal contract awards from the Federal Procurement Data System, published by the Office of Management and Budget. Covers contracts awarded by federal agencies to organizations.

Entity Resolution

The key analytical step is entity resolution - linking the same organization across all three databases. The same company appears under different naming conventions: "Boeing Co." in FEC data, "The Boeing Company" in LDA data, and "BOEING COMPANY, THE" in USAspending.

Our pipeline normalizes company names, resolves parent-subsidiary relationships, and links organization records across the three federal systems to show the full picture of an organization's political footprint.

Contributions vs. Independent Expenditures

We keep two very different kinds of political money strictly separate, because the FEC's committee-to-candidate file (itpas2) mixes them:

• Contributions (FEC transaction types 24K and 24Z) are money given to a candidate's committee, direct and in-kind. These are what we report as a candidate's "contributions received" and a committee's "contributions made," and they are subject to federal contribution limits.
• Independent expenditures (types 24A and 24E) are money an outside committee, typically a super PAC, spends independently to support (24E) or oppose (24A) a candidate. By law they are not contributions, are not coordinated with the campaign, and are not capped. We report them under "outside spending," never as contributions.

This distinction matters: a super PAC may spend hundreds of millions opposing a candidate without ever contributing a dollar to anyone. Conflating the two, as raw FEC totals do, would wrongly show that spending as money the targeted candidate "received." We exclude coordinated party expenditures (24C) and communication costs (24F) from both measures.

Coverage

• 1,410 politicians with recorded PAC contributions or outside spending (2024 cycle), out of 7,124 candidates tracked in FEC filings
• 21,545 organizations with tracked activity across contributions, lobbying, or federal contracts
• 79 lobbying issue areas from healthcare to defense
• 56 states and territories with aggregated contribution data

Processing Pipeline

1. Download FEC bulk data files (contributions, committees, candidates)
2. Download LDA bulk XML filings from the Senate public records portal
3. Download USAspending contract award CSV files
4. Normalize organization names across all three datasets
5. Apply entity resolution matching to link records across datasets
6. Aggregate contribution totals, lobbying expenditure totals, and contract award totals per entity
7. Load into our search-indexed database

Data Vintage and Update Frequency

FEC contribution data covers the 2024 election cycle, with filings updated as campaigns and PACs submit periodic reports, monthly or quarterly during election years, with post-election reports filed within 30 days. Senate LDA lobbying disclosures cover 2023–2024 activity and are filed quarterly. Federal contract data on USAspending.gov is updated daily as agencies process new obligations. PlainInfluence refreshes its database when significant new filing periods close, typically on a quarterly cycle to incorporate the latest disclosures from all three sources.

Accuracy Commitment

PlainInfluence reproduces federal disclosure data exactly as filed with the FEC, Senate Office of Public Records, and USAspending.gov. Contribution amounts, lobbying expenditures, and contract values are presented without editorial modification or subjective scoring. Entity name normalization is the only transformation applied, linking related filings to the same organization across the three databases. When filings are amended by the filer, the most recent version supersedes the original.

Limitations

• Political finance data has reporting lags, not all filings are available simultaneously, and some filers submit reports well after deadlines. The most recent filing period may not yet be fully represented in the data.
• Entity resolution may occasionally link unrelated organizations with similar names, or fail to link subsidiaries and affiliated entities that use very different naming conventions. Users should verify underlying records for any organization they research closely.
• Dark money organizations, 501(c)(4) social welfare groups, and 501(c)(6) trade associations are not required to disclose their donors to the FEC. Their political influence through issue advertising, grassroots campaigns, and independent expenditures may not be fully captured in PlainInfluence data.
• All monetary figures are taken verbatim from source filings. PlainInfluence does not estimate, adjust for inflation, or impute missing values.
• This site does not endorse or oppose any political candidate, party, or organization. PlainInfluence is not affiliated with the FEC, Senate, OMB, or any government agency.

Contact

Questions about our methodology? Contact us.