About this site and how the numbers are made
Campaign Cash Map is a free, non-partisan view of the money in the 2026 House and Senate races, built entirely from public Federal Election Commission filings.
What it is for
Every federal campaign, PAC and outside group has to tell the FEC where its money comes from and where it goes. Those reports are public, but they are spread across millions of rows in dozens of files, and the biggest filers' reports can sit unprocessed for weeks. This site puts the whole picture in one place, keeps it current, and shows it the same way for every candidate and every party. It takes no position on any candidate, party or issue.
Where the data comes from
| What you see | Source |
|---|---|
| Raised, spent, cash on hand, debt | FEC candidate summary files (weball26, webl26), which carry each campaign's latest report totals |
| Cash and spending over time | Every regular report each campaign filed since January 2023, from the OpenFEC API |
| Where the money goes and every payment | Itemized operating expenditures (Schedule B), from the FEC bulk file plus reports the FEC has not yet processed, read straight from the raw electronic filings |
| Late donations | 48-hour notices (FEC Form 6) filed in the final weeks before the election |
| Outside spending | Independent expenditure file (24- and 48-hour reports and Schedule E) |
| PAC pages and contributor pages | Itemized receipts (Schedules A), committee-to-committee transfers, committee master files, and the raw filings not yet processed |
| Small-donor totals in funding profiles | FEC committee summary file (unitemized individual contributions) |
| Nonprofit status for the scorecard | IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File |
| FEC letters | Requests for Additional Information the FEC sent each committee, from the OpenFEC API |
| Lobbying issues on PAC pages | Lobbying Disclosure Act filings at lda.gov |
| State disclosure-law grades | Each state's statutes, rules and election agency guidance, cited on every grade |
How often it updates
Everything is rebuilt from fresh FEC files early every morning through November 4, 2026, to keep up with the pre-election surge, and after that twice a week (Monday and Thursday mornings). Each page says the date its data was pulled. Reports the FEC has not finished processing are read directly from the raw electronic filings, so the newest reports appear within days of being filed rather than weeks.
What the numbers mean
- Itemized spending versus total spent. Campaigns report every payment over $200 to a vendor (and many smaller ones). The "where the money goes" breakdown and the payment list cover those itemized payments; the headline total spent comes from the campaign's own summary and includes everything.
- Credit cards, reimbursements and payroll services. When a campaign pays a card bill or pays a staffer back, the report lists the purchases underneath. Those purchases are counted in their own categories (meals, travel, ads) and shown under the payment. Vendors paid $200 or less in the whole cycle never have to be named; that money shows as "not itemized."
- Spending categories are assigned from the purpose each campaign wrote on its report, using keyword rules, with the FEC's own category code as a fallback. The rules are public in the build scripts and will sometimes miscategorize an unusual description.
- Amendments. When a campaign or group amends a report, the newest version replaces the older one. For outside spending, an ad listed again on an amended report under a new transaction ID is counted once.
- Contributors. The contributor search lists people who gave $200 or more in total this cycle, as campaigns report them: name, city, state and employer. Street addresses, ZIP codes and occupations are never shown. People with the same name in the same city appear as one record; someone who moved may appear twice. Donations under $200 are not itemized by campaigns and cannot be searched by name anywhere.
- Bundled gifts through ActBlue, WinRed and similar platforms are counted at the campaign that received them, not at the platform.
The outside money scorecard
The full formula, edge cases and how to dispute a grade are on the Methods and corrections page.
Every group that spent $100,000 or more on ads for or against 2026 candidates gets a score from 0 to 100: 60 percent for how much of the money that paid for its ads can be traced to named people, companies, unions or small donors (money from nonprofits that name no donors counts as untraceable; money from LLCs and unknown sources counts half); 25 percent for filing its ad reports on time; 15 percent for how often the FEC had to write to it about its reports. A is 90 or more, B 80 to 89, C 70 to 79, D 60 to 69, F below 60. Money a group received from other PACs is credited by those PACs' own scores. The formula is the same for every group regardless of which side it supports.
Funding profiles
Each campaign's money is split into small donors (gifts under $200, from the FEC summary), larger donors, PACs, the party and the candidate's own money, plus the share of itemized gifts from the home state and how outside groups' spending compares with what the campaign raised. These are plain numbers, not grades.
State disclosure-law grades
A pilot that grades six states and the federal rules on 13 tests worth 100 points: whether outside spending must be reported, whether reports name the candidate and say support or oppose, whether reporting is fast near an election, whether issue ads that name candidates are covered (including online ads), whether the donors behind the spending are disclosed and traced to their original source, whether top donors must appear on the ad, and whether data is filed electronically and published in searchable, downloadable form. Every point cites the statute or rule. The grades have not yet been reviewed by an election lawyer and are labeled a pilot.
Known limits
- FEC processing lags: itemized detail for the newest reports comes from raw filings and can be revised when the FEC processes them.
- Candidates who lost a primary or withdrew remain in the data because they still file reports. Where primary results are confirmed, race pages show the November nominees first and mark everyone else as not on the ballot; see Methods.
- Outside spending is matched to candidates by FEC ID when the spender gave one, otherwise by name, state and seat; a few hundred thousand dollars a cycle cannot be matched and is left out.
- Category rules are keyword based and imperfect; the payment list shows the campaign's own words so you can check.
Checking the work
Every campaign and PAC page links to the same records on FEC.gov. If you find an error, the fastest way to check is the FEC link on that page; the data here is only ever a rearrangement of what the filer reported.