FEC Independent Expenditures
When a Super PAC or advocacy group spends money to boost or attack a candidate in a federal election, they have to tell the FEC about it. This data is all those reports from 2010 through the 2026 elections. You can see who's spending, how much they're spending, which candidate they're targeting, and whether they're for or against them. The FEC demands quick reporting close to elections, so you can also track when the money actually ran versus when the report arrived. It's a window into outside money flowing into federal races.
- Source rows:
- 713,467
- Coverage:
- 2009-02-11T00:00:00Z – 2026-11-25T00:00:00Z
CSV: all rows from “enriched”.
Table filters, sorting and pagination are not included.
Explore data
Views organize this dataset for different questions.
Loading views…
Enriched
Independent expenditures with spender committee name, type, and connected organization joined from fec/committees. Excludes expenditures over $100M, a threshold no real single IE transaction has ever crossed (the largest verified ad buys top out around $55M) - values above it are trolls filing under fake candidate names (e.g. cartoon characters, billion-dollar "donations") rather than real FEC-reportable spending. Rows are raw filings, so every amendment of one notice appears; use the current view to sum.
View defined in OpenData · Source: fec
Dataset overview
This overview is independent of the table. Table selections and filters do not change it.
Questions this data answers
- How much did Super PACs spend for or against a specific candidate in a given election cycle?
- Which committees spent the most on independent expenditures in the 2024 election?
- What was the total volume of independent spending for versus against all federal candidates in 2022?
- How quickly does the FEC receive independent expenditure reports compared to when ads actually run?
Download
CSV: all rows from “enriched”.
Table filters, sorting and pagination are not included.
Columns
26 columns in this table.