fec_contributions — US campaign contributions of individuals to political committees (FEC, 1980-2026)

Description

Bipartite networks of the contributions of individuals to the political committees of US federal elections (the campaign committees of candidates, party committees and political action committees), from the bulk data of the US Federal Election Commission (FEC). The committees must report to the FEC the contributions they receive from individuals that exceed 200 dollars in an election cycle (and many report smaller ones too, in particular the conduit committees, such as ActBlue and WinRed, through which individuals give to candidates); the data of "contributions by individuals" contain these itemized receipts, as reported, for each two-year election cycle. There is one network per cycle, from 1980 (1979-1980) to 2026 (2025-2026, as of the download date, October 2026; the data of the recent cycles are updated by the FEC as new reports are filed).

The nodes are the contributors and the committees, and an edge from a contributor to a committee aggregates all the reported receipts of the committee from the contributor in the cycle, with their number and total amount (since the recent cycles have more than 10^8 receipts, the individual receipts are not kept as edges). The committees are identified by their FEC id, and described by the committee master file of the cycle. The FEC gives no identifier of the contributors, only their name, address, employer and occupation as reported by each committee: the contributors are therefore merged by their name (upper-cased, with spaces normalized), the first five digits of their ZIP code and their employer (upper-cased) together, so that the same person with differently written names or employers (or who moved) is split into several nodes, and different persons with the same name, ZIP code and employer are merged. The data also contain some contributions of organizations and other entities, which are treated in the same way (see entity_type).

The receipts are as reported, including refunds (negative amounts) and the memo entries (memo code X), which are not counted in the totals of the reports: e.g. the receipts that a candidate committee reports as earmarked through a conduit committee also appear as receipts of the conduit, so that the same money can appear on two edges. Their numbers and amounts are given separately on the edges. Note that the law (52 U.S.C. 30111(a)(4)) forbids the use of the names and addresses of contributors from these data for soliciting contributions or for commercial purposes.

The networks have the following properties:

(Node) is_committee: whether the node is a committee (otherwise it is a contributor).
(Node) committee_id (committees): the FEC id of the committee (e.g. C00401224).
(Node) name: the name of the committee, or of the contributor (as merged, upper-cased).
(Node) zip5, employer (contributors): the first five digits of the ZIP code and the employer, as merged.
(Node) city, state: the city and state of the contributor (as first reported) or of the committee.
(Node) occupation (contributors): the occupation (as first reported).
(Node) entity_type (contributors): the type of entity (IND individual, ORG organization, CAN candidate, ...; empty in the older cycles).
(Node) committee_type, committee_designation, party, connected_organization, candidate_id (committees): the type of the committee (e.g. H, S, P for the campaign committees of candidates to the House, Senate and presidency; Q, N for PACs; X, Y for party committees; O for super PACs), its designation (e.g. P principal campaign committee, J joint fundraiser, U unauthorized), the party affiliation, the connected organization and the candidate id (from the committee master file; empty for committees that are not in it).
(Edge) count, amount: the number of receipts that are not memo entries, and their total amount in US dollars.
(Edge) memo_count, memo_amount: the number and total amount of the memo entries.
(Edge) first_date, last_date: the dates of the first and the last receipt (YYYY-MM-DD; empty if not given).

Tags

Social Political Economic Bipartite Weighted Metadata

Added

2026-10-31

Citation

Federal Election Commission, "Contributions by individuals" and "Committee master" bulk data files (1980-2026) www.fec.gov

Upstream URL OK

https://www.fec.gov/data/browse-data/?tab=bulk-data

Upstream license

Public domain (US government work); 52 U.S.C. 30111(a)(4) forbids the use of contributor names and addresses for solicitation or commercial purposes, https://www.fec.gov/updates/sale-or-use-contributor-information/

Networks

Tip: click on a column header to sort the list, or hover over it for a description.

Column legend

$\left<k\right>$: Mean degree
$\sigma_k$: Standard deviation of the degrees
$\lambda_h$: Largest eigenvalue of the Hashimoto (non-backtracking) matrix
$\tau$: Random walk mixing time
$r$: Degree assortativity
$c$: Global clustering coefficient
$\oslash$: (Pseudo-) diameter
$S$: Relative size of the largest component
NPs: Node properties
EPs: Edge properties

Name	Nodes	Edges	$\left<k\right>$	$\sigma_k$	$\lambda_h$	$\tau$	$r$	$\oslash$	$S$	Kind	Mode	NPs	EPs	gt	GraphML	GML	csv
1980	280,276	287,565	1.03	68.11	20.83	3096.48	-0.21	20	0.91	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	8.0 MiB	11.7 MiB	11.9 MiB	11.5 MiB
1982	147,043	153,821	1.05	33.84	39.56	889.82	-0.17	20	0.89	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	4.4 MiB	6.3 MiB	6.4 MiB	6.2 MiB
1984	223,182	236,033	1.06	54.58	28.58	940.96	-0.20	18	0.92	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	6.5 MiB	9.6 MiB	9.7 MiB	9.3 MiB
1986	224,552	234,311	1.04	40.27	27.03	1220.18	-0.16	18	0.91	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	6.7 MiB	9.8 MiB	9.9 MiB	9.5 MiB
1988	347,401	362,708	1.04	67.55	32.72	1213.36	-0.20	16	0.95	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	10.0 MiB	14.9 MiB	15.0 MiB	14.7 MiB
1990	414,865	432,994	1.04	49.31	31.51	5310.27	-0.13	16	0.91	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	12.0 MiB	17.9 MiB	18.1 MiB	17.6 MiB
1992	669,881	720,979	1.08	75.51	54.88	2459.61	-0.14	16	0.95	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	19.9 MiB	29.0 MiB	29.2 MiB	28.6 MiB
1994	639,494	681,577	1.07	51.13	33.47	3366.15	-0.15	16	0.95	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	18.9 MiB	27.5 MiB	27.8 MiB	27.4 MiB
1996	905,774	981,621	1.08	96.06	56.31	1774.53	-0.15	14	0.96	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	26.6 MiB	39.0 MiB	39.3 MiB	39.1 MiB
1998	736,018	790,513	1.07	66.55	38.62	3337.47	-0.11	16	0.95	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	22.2 MiB	32.4 MiB	32.7 MiB	31.8 MiB
2000	1,257,963	1,357,415	1.08	140.94	63.77	3536.86	-0.17	16	0.97	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	21.3 MiB	32.8 MiB	33.2 MiB	35.1 MiB
2002	1,047,157	1,079,836	1.03	91.73	34.50	16460.77	-0.11	24	0.90	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	18.4 MiB	27.9 MiB	28.4 MiB	30.1 MiB
2004	1,779,895	1,902,733	1.07	236.25	117.41	7999.63	-0.24	16	0.96	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	34.0 MiB	52.0 MiB	51.4 MiB	55.7 MiB
2006	1,257,804	1,343,752	1.07	107.28	49.98	9072.97	-0.13	16	0.94	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	24.2 MiB	37.1 MiB	36.8 MiB	39.7 MiB
2008	2,176,748	2,382,663	1.09	301.88	152.50	7927.22	-0.19	18	0.97	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	42.6 MiB	65.4 MiB	64.4 MiB	70.8 MiB
2010	1,366,506	1,491,332	1.09	92.66	66.34	15299.92	-0.13	16	0.94	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	26.7 MiB	41.1 MiB	40.7 MiB	43.9 MiB
2012	2,166,021	2,410,688	1.11	285.36	210.89	7300.56	-0.22	16	0.97	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	42.8 MiB	66.0 MiB	65.1 MiB	71.3 MiB
2014	1,272,731	1,422,593	1.12	117.94	101.77	15925.74	-0.11	16	0.94	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	25.1 MiB	38.7 MiB	38.3 MiB	41.4 MiB
2016	3,662,798	4,281,643	1.17	420.14	341.05	74017.11	-0.25	17	0.93	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	74.7 MiB	115.9 MiB	114.3 MiB	125.5 MiB
2018	3,347,882	4,205,772	1.26	438.48	300.19	26998.72	-0.14	18	0.92	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	68.6 MiB	107.3 MiB	105.7 MiB	114.4 MiB
2020	7,844,861	11,875,243	1.51	952.42	842.81	15920.68	-0.25	16	0.97	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	168.2 MiB	272.1 MiB	265.7 MiB	291.4 MiB
2022	4,828,088	7,159,321	1.48	659.76	472.70	17592.06	-0.21	16	0.95	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	100.5 MiB	161.8 MiB	158.8 MiB	174.0 MiB
2024	6,136,098	9,457,395	1.54	765.10	761.91	26598.84	-0.30	22	0.96	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	128.7 MiB	209.2 MiB	203.9 MiB	222.7 MiB
2026	2,935,592	4,315,726	1.47	321.08	279.49	21722.84	-0.13	18	0.90	Directed	Bipartite	is_committee committee_id name zip5 employer city state occupation entity_type committee_type committee_designation party connected_organization candidate_id	count memo_count amount memo_amount first_date last_date	61.6 MiB	98.5 MiB	96.6 MiB	106.3 MiB