FEC Federal Candidate Finance Scraper

Extract every federal candidate's campaign finance totals from the Federal Election Commission's official API (api.open.fec.gov) — receipts, disbursements, cash on hand, debts, individual itemized contributions, party committee transfers, principal committees, and candidacy status. Filter by election cycle, office (President / Senate / House), state, district, party, candidate name, or status code.

This is the primary-source FEC data that powers Politico, OpenSecrets, FollowTheMoney, and every political-finance reporter and PAC. Records update nightly as new filings come in.

Data fields

Field	Description
candidateId	FEC candidate ID (e.g. P40014052)
name	Candidate name
party, office, state, district	Political identity & seat
cycle, electionYear	Election cycle
incumbentChallenge	Incumbent / Challenger / Open seat
candidateStatus	Statutory / Future / Prior / Not yet
hasRaisedFunds	Has raised any reportable funds
receipts	Total receipts ($)
disbursements	Total disbursements ($)
cashOnHandEndPeriod	Cash on hand at last coverage end ($)
debtsOwedByCommittee	Outstanding debts ($)
individualItemizedContributions	Itemized individual contributions ($)
otherPoliticalCommitteeContributions	PAC contributions ($)
partyCommitteeContributions	Party committee contributions ($)
transfersFromOtherAuthorizedCommittee	Joint fundraising transfers ($)
coverageStartDate, coverageEndDate	Period covered
firstFileDate, lastFileDate	Filing history
address	Candidate's filed mailing address
principalCommittees	Linked principal campaign committee(s)

How to scrape FEC campaign finance data

1. Set the cycle (default 2026).
2. (Optional) office: P, S, or H.
3. (Optional) state (two-letter), district, party (DEM, REP, LIB, etc.).
4. (Optional) candidateName for full-text search.
5. (Optional) sortBy: -receipts, -disbursements, -cash_on_hand_end_period, or any FEC sortable field.
6. (Recommended) Provide your own apiKey from https://api.data.gov/signup/ to avoid the shared DEMO_KEY rate limit.
7. Set maxResults.
8. Click Start.

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.003 per candidate record.

Input example

{
  "cycle": 2026,
  "office": "S",
  "state": "PA",
  "sortBy": "-receipts",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Output example

{
  "candidateId": "H6AL05210",
  "name": "HOWARD, GREG MR JR",
  "party": "DEM",
  "office": "House",
  "state": "AL",
  "district": "05",
  "cycle": 2026,
  "receipts": 25000,
  "disbursements": 2189.95,
  "cashOnHandEndPeriod": 586.28,
  "candidateStatus": "N",
  "incumbentChallenge": "Challenger"
}

Use cases

• Political journalism: identify top-raising candidates, surface late entrants, track cash-on-hand by race.
• Polling / pollster targeting: build call lists for candidate committees by state/office/cycle.
• PAC & vendor business development: prospect campaigns by spending tier and party.
• Academic political science: bulk panel data on candidate financial trajectories.
• Compliance / opposition research: pull all filings by a single candidate or committee.

FAQ

Do I need an API key? Optional. Without one, this Actor uses the shared DEMO_KEY (~30 req/hr, ~50 req/day). For unlimited use, get a free key at https://api.data.gov/signup/ — takes 30 seconds.

Does this include individual donor names? No — this Actor returns candidate-level financial totals. For contributor-level data, FEC publishes separate endpoints; we can build a sibling Actor on request.

How current is the data? FEC updates nightly. Each Actor run hits the live API.

Legal

Data sourced from the U.S. Federal Election Commission (api.open.fec.gov), a US Government public dataset. All campaign finance records are public by law (FECA, 52 U.S.C. § 30104). No authentication bypass.