Campaign finance data tells a story that polling and punditry rarely capture: who, exactly, is writing checks to the people who make federal law. That’s the question Who Funds Congress was built to answer.
The Federal Election Commission has required candidates to disclose their fundraising and spending since the 1970s. Today that data is available through the FEC’s public API, updated regularly throughout each two-year election cycle. The raw numbers are there — but navigating the FEC’s own interfaces takes patience and familiarity with disclosure terminology most people don’t have. This site does the translation.
What you’ll find here
Every Senate and House candidate who has raised money in the current cycle has a profile page showing total receipts, total spent, cash on hand, and a breakdown between individual contributions and PAC money. State-level pages aggregate all candidates from a given state so you can see, at a glance, how much money is flowing through a particular delegation. The analysis section surfaces rankings: biggest fundraisers, most PAC-reliant, largest war chests.
The 2024 cycle data is preserved in full at /2024/ for comparison. New data for the 2026 cycle is fetched weekly while the election window is open.
Methodology and limits
Candidate totals come from the FEC’s candidates/totals/ endpoint, filtered to active candidates who have raised funds. Dollar figures represent what the FEC has on file at the time of the last fetch — there is always some lag between when campaigns file and when that data appears in the API. For the most current filings, the FEC’s own site is the authoritative source.
PAC-level sector breakdowns are being rolled out in phases, starting with the top 200 candidates by receipts per cycle. Full details are on the methodology page.
Who runs this
Who Funds Congress is an independent research project. There’s no funding from political campaigns, advocacy groups, or media companies. The data speaks for itself.
Questions or corrections? Reach out at [email protected].