Where our data comes from
Every page about a politician is built from these public records. Every number and position on those pages links to its source.
| Source | License or terms | Last downloaded |
|---|---|---|
| congress-legislators: current members of CongressNames, offices, terms, parties, official websites, phone numbers, social accounts and FEC IDs for every sitting member of Congress. | Public domain | October 16, 2026 |
| Federal Election Commission bulk data, 2025–26 cycleEvery federal candidate and campaign committee; each campaign's money raised, spent and on hand; gifts from PACs to candidates; spending by outside groups for and against candidates. | Public record | October 16, 2026 |
| FEC itemized individual contributions, 2025–26 (indiv26)Every itemized gift from a person to a federal campaign. We publish only totals by employer and by home state, never names or addresses: federal law bars using these names to ask for money or for commercial purposes. | Public record; may not be used to solicit contributions or for commercial purposes | October 13, 2026 |
| OpenFEC API: contributions by sizeEach campaign's money from people, split by gift size, as the FEC computes it. | Public record | October 15, 2026 |
| Voteview (UCLA): DW-NOMINATE scores, 119th CongressHow liberal or conservative each member of Congress votes, computed from every roll-call vote. | Free to use with credit | October 16, 2026 |
| FEC bulk data: PAC and party committee summaries, 2025–26 (webk26)What each PAC and party committee raised, spent, gave and has left. | Public record | October 16, 2026 |
| On the record business section: company boards from SEC filings and WikidataWho sits on the boards of companies whose PACs give to candidates. | Sources on each company page | October 16, 2026 |
| Open States / Plural: state legislators, statewide officials and mayorsState legislators, governors and other statewide officials, and mayors of large cities: offices, districts, parties, contact details and their own source links. | CC0 | October 16, 2026 |
| GovInfo / Congress.gov bill status, 119th CongressEvery bill and joint resolution in the 119th Congress: sponsor, cosponsors, subject, status, and the recorded votes taken on it. | Public domain | October 15, 2026 |
| Roll-call votes: Office of the Clerk, U.S. House, and U.S. SenateHow every member voted on each bill's final passage, from the official roll-call records. | Public domain | October 15, 2026 |
| congress-legislators: committee membershipWhich committees each member of Congress sits on. | Public domain | October 15, 2026 |
| Wikidata: official and campaign websitesOfficial and campaign websites for well-known politicians, matched by FEC and Congress IDs. | CC0 | October 13, 2026 |
| Politicians' own websitesIssues and priorities pages, read by our crawler, which follows each site's robots.txt and waits 2 seconds between requests. Every stated position quotes the page word for word and links to it: 2,638 positions from 538 pages so far. | Quoted with a link | Shown on each position |
How positions are checked
- We save the text of each issues page with the date, so we can show when a position changed.
- An AI model on our own computer lists the positions the page states, each with a one-line summary and the exact quote.
- Code throws out any position whose quote isn't word for word on the page, is a headline rather than a sentence, or whose summary has a number the quote doesn't.
- A second check throws out any summary the quote doesn't back up.
What we don't have yet
- State and local campaign money. Each state keeps its own records; we're adding them one state at a time.
- Primary results. FEC records list everyone who filed, including candidates who lost a primary.
- We leave out outside-spending filings with impossible amounts (one filer reported spending $9 billion). Any single expenditure over $50 million removes that filer's reports.
- Candidates for state and local office who don't hold office now.
See a mistake? Report it. Fixes go on the corrections page.