FEC Independent Expenditures Scraper

Pull FEC Schedule E independent-expenditure filings — every dollar a PAC, Super PAC, or non-profit spent supporting or opposing a federal candidate. Returns committee, candidate, payee, amount, support/oppose flag, dissemination date, election cycle, and category. Built for political journalists, opposition research firms, campaign finance watchdogs, and election lawyers — the OpenSecrets-style workflows that need clean structured data without scraping fec.gov by hand.

Runs against the official OpenFEC REST API (api.open.fec.gov). Free with the shared DEMO_KEY for low-volume usage; supply your own free API key for unlimited throughput.

What you get

Field	Type	Notes
candidate_id	string	FEC ID (e.g. P00009423)
candidate_name	string	Full candidate name
candidate_office	string	H House / S Senate / P President
candidate_office_state	string	2-letter state
candidate_office_district	string	District number
candidate_party	string	DEM / REP / IND / etc.
committee_id	string	Spending committee FEC ID
committee_name	string	Spending committee name
expenditure_amount	number	USD
expenditure_date	string	ISO date
expenditure_description	string	Plain-text purpose ("media buy", "phone banking", etc.)
dissemination_date	string	When the ad / mailer actually ran
support_oppose_indicator	string	S (support) or O (oppose)
election_type	string	P primary / G general / R runoff
category_code_full	string	Category description
report_year / report_type	string	Filing year and report code
payee_name	string	Vendor that received the money
payee_city / payee_state / payee_zip	string	Vendor address
memo_text	string	Free-text memo
pdf_url	string	Direct link to the FEC-hosted PDF filing
image_number / transaction_id / file_number / sub_id	string	Cross-reference IDs

Use cases

• Opposition research — pull every IE attacking a sitting incumbent in their primary, broken down by spender and vendor.
• Campaign finance journalism — track Super PAC activity in a swing race week-over-week, surface late-cycle ad buys.
• Vendor intel — see which media buyers, mail houses, and digital firms are getting the IE money.
• Compliance vetting — corporate PAC officers verifying their committee's reported expenditures match what's published.
• Academic research — bulk-pull a cycle of IEs into a notebook for political-science analysis.
• Real-time monitoring — schedule the actor daily during the election window, alert on new spending against your client/candidate.

Quick start

Input JSON (search by candidate name):

{
  "candidate_name": "Trump",
  "cycle": 2024,
  "min_date": "2024-09-01",
  "max_date": "2024-11-05",
  "support_oppose": "O",
  "max_results": 100
}

Sample output item:

{
  "candidate_id": "P80001571",
  "candidate_name": "TRUMP, DONALD J.",
  "candidate_office": "P",
  "candidate_party": "REP",
  "committee_id": "C00580100",
  "committee_name": "FUTURE FORWARD USA ACTION",
  "expenditure_amount": 4275000.0,
  "dissemination_date": "2024-10-22",
  "support_oppose_indicator": "O",
  "election_type": "G",
  "expenditure_description": "MEDIA BUY",
  "payee_name": "GMMB INC",
  "payee_city": "WASHINGTON",
  "payee_state": "DC",
  "pdf_url": "https://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/.../12345.pdf"
}

Python SDK example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/fec-independent-expenditures-scraper").call(run_input={
    "candidate_name": "Harris",
    "cycle": 2024,
    "support_oppose": "S",
    "max_results": 250,
    "apiKey": "YOUR_OPENFEC_KEY",
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(f"${item['expenditure_amount']:,.0f}  {item['committee_name']}  -> {item['payee_name']}")

cURL example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~fec-independent-expenditures-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"committee_id":"C00580100","cycle":2024,"max_results":50}'

Integrations

• Zapier / Make.com / n8n — feed new IEs into Slack / Airtable / Google Sheets the moment they appear in the FEC stream.
• Postgres / Snowflake / BigQuery — sync the dataset via Apify webhooks into your political-data warehouse.
• Looker / Tableau / Metabase — power campaign-finance dashboards directly off the dataset.

Pricing

Pay-per-event:

• Actor start: $0.00005 (one-time per run)
• Per expenditure record: $0.008

Cost calculator:

Records	Approx. cost
50	$0.40
100	$0.80
500	$4.00
1,000	$8.00
5,000	$40.00

Premium pricing reflects the compliance / opposition-research value of clean campaign-finance data — buyers in this niche routinely pay 4-figure subscriptions for OpenSecrets-style feeds.

FAQ

Q: Do I need an API key?
A: No — the scraper falls back to OpenFEC's DEMO_KEY (shared, ~30 calls/hour). For real workloads sign up free at https://api.open.fec.gov/developers (instant, unlimited) and pass it via the apiKey input.

Q: How fresh is the data?
A: As fresh as FEC publishes. Schedule E filings appear within 24 hours of the underlying report being filed; for committees on monthly filing schedules the lag is days, for 24/48-hour notice filings (last 20 days before an election) the lag is hours.

Q: What's NOT included?
A: Schedule A (contributions), Schedule B (operating expenditures), Schedule F (party coordinated expenditures). This actor focuses on independent expenditures only. For other schedules see the related actors below.

Q: How does cursor pagination work?
A: The actor automatically follows OpenFEC's last_indexes cursor across pages, so a max_results=2000 run will sweep up to 2,000 sequential records without a page ceiling.

Q: Can I filter by state, district, race?
A: Yes — pass the candidate_id corresponding to the candidate in that race, OR the committee_id of the spender. Resolve candidate IDs via the candidate_name field (auto-resolves up to 3 best matches).

Q: What about 501(c)(4) "dark money"?
A: 501(c)(4) groups are not required to file Schedule E unless they spend in the 60/30-day windows. This actor returns everything filed; what's not filed (genuinely dark money) is by definition not in the FEC database.

Related actors from nexgendata

• Government Contracts Search — pair political spending with federal contract awards for influence-money analyses.
• H1B Visa Salary Search — verify donor-employer / lobbyist claims against the H1B record.
• Court Records Search — track campaign-finance enforcement cases through the federal court system.

About nexgendata

Built and maintained by nexgendata — a portfolio of 160+ specialized scrapers and MCP servers covering compliance, civic data, lead gen, and developer tools. Need higher volume, custom output, or a private fork? Email steve_corbeil@hotmail.com.