Campaign Finances

"View political giving at a glance by choosing a state and election year. Want more detail? Add a candidate, contributor or industry.... The Institute collects the information for all state-level candidates in the primary and general elections and then puts it into a database.... assign political donors an economic interest code.... The following table provides a breakdown of the numerous Industry and Business classifications within 19 general economic sectors."

provides details about campaign contributions by state and election year, including:

identifies ballot measures in each state, whether the measure passed or failed, ballot measure committees, and all contributions (by contributor and amount). Subjects include:

Political contribUtion Logarithmic Scatterplot profilE

• "The PULSE tools use medians to compare candidate fund-raising totals. A median figure describes the midpoint of fund-raising totals, with an equal number of candidates raising more and less than that amount. The closer winning and losing candidates' medians are to the overall median, the more balanced the funds raised during the election cycle."
• "PULSE pages are available for all 50 states and for at least four election cycles. It allows you to view data for all state candidates or to limit your search to only the specific office candidates you want to see. You can also select a specific economic sector to see only the money given by those particular contributors."
• "On the state PULSE pages, each candidate is represented by a circle. As you move your mouse over each circle, the candidate's name and contribution data will appear in the screen. You can click on each dot to be taken to a specific page that provides breakdowns of the candidate's campaign kitty. Each dot is placed on the chart in accordance with the amount of money he or she raised. In the PULSE, winners are displayed on the top of the chart, with losing candidates at the bottom."
• "The color of the dot represents the party of the candidate; Blue for Democratic candidates, red for Republican, green for Third-party and grey for non-partisan. Additionally, Incumbents are indicated with a small yellow dot, which may appear as an open circle on many monitors."
• "If you need to find a particular candidate's circle on the PULSE, move your mouse to the "Find a Candidate" text in the chart's lower left side."