Downloadable Databases Containing Data About Candidates, Parties and Other Committees

Files covering 1995-96 are updated and made available on the 2nd of every month. We'll put a notice on this page when the files have been updated.

We'd like to hear from you!

We know that the downloadable files are getting big and difficult to download, so we'd like to break them up. What we want to know is what kind of breakdown would be most useful. For the individual contribution file, for example, we can imagine dividing the file by state of the contributor, or the type of committee receiving the contribution (House vs. Senate vs. Presidential vs. Party vs. PAC) or just arbitrarily dividing the file into subsets. Do those of you who download the file have a preference? We'd like to accomodate as many users as possible, with the limitation that we can't put these files out in lots of different ways at the same time.

cansum94.zip 292,000+ bytes
A fixed length, undelimited file with one record for each campaign for the U.S. House or Senate during 1993-94. This file includes summary information about the financing of the campaign, including total receipts, the total coming from individuals, totals from each of six categories of Political Action Committees, totals from Party committees, campaign spending, cash on hand, and debts owed by the campaign.
Format Description
pacsum94.zip 269,000+ bytes
A fixed length, undelimited file with one record for each PAC involved in 1993-94 federal elections. It includes financial information from the PAC, e.g. pac receipts and spending, contributions to Senate and House candidates, contributions to Democrats, Republicans and other party candidates, contributions to incumbent members of Congress, challengers, and candidates in open seats.
Format Description
ptysum94.zip 22,000+
A fixed length, undelimited file with one record for each party committee involved in 1993-94 federal elections. The file includes financial information for the party committee including receipts and disbursements, contributions to federal candidates, and expenditures made on behalf of Congressional campaigns.
Format Description

There are also two more detailed files available for each two year election cycle. These contain information about specific PACs or party committees' contributions and expenditures related to federal campaigns. For example;

pacdet94.zip 1,820,000+ bytes
A fixed length undelimited file with a record for each candidate to whom a PAC made either a contribution or an independent expenditure. It identifies the candidate and the total amount given or spent by the PAC. This file can be used then to see which candidates a PAC has supported, and alternatively you can see which PACs have given to a specific candidate.
Format Description
ptydet94.zip 42,000+ bytes
The same as the PAC detailed file described above, but it contains only party committee activity.

Detailed Directory - Files covering 1995-96

These files are updated on the 2nd of each month, and include any information entered into the FEC database up to that point. You should keep in mind that it takes 30-40 days after reports are received for all the information to be computerized.

foiacm.zip (630,000+ bytes)
The Committee Master file, provides basic information about each committee registered with the FEC. It includes the name and sponsor for PAC's, name, treasurer's name, and mailing address for all committees (Campaign committees, PAC's, Parties, and others). Perhaps most important, it includes the FEC ID number for each committee along with this basic information. This number provides the link to financial data files which contain the ID number of committees making and receiving contributions.
Format Description
foiacn..zip (242,000+ bytes)
The Candidate Master file provides basic information about campaigns - name, party, state, district, incumbent/challenger/open seat status, year of election, address, etc. It also contains an ID number unique to that candidate which provides the link to financial files where candidate activity is provided.
Format Description
itcont.zip (28,100,000+ bytes)
This file contains each contribution from an individual to and federal committee, if the contribution was at least $200 or more. It includes the ID number of the committee receiving the contribution, the name, city,state, zip code, and place of business of the contributor along with the date and amount of the contribution. The amount field is in EBCDIC format, i.e. if the value is negative, the right most column will contain a special character - ]= -0;j= -1;k= -2;L= -3;m= -4;n= -5;o= -6;p= -7;q= -8;and r= -9. NOTE: this is a very large file, you must be able to store up to 150 megabytes of data at the end of an election cycle.
Format Description

The individual contributions file (itcont.zip) is so big now that we've tried to set up a process for updating the file, rather than downloading a new version each month. The following three files represent additions, changes, and deletions from the itcont file that have taken place during the last calendar month. If you downloaded the full file last month (or have been keeping up with updates), this month you can download the add file (incadd.zip), the change file (incchg.zip) and the deletes file (incdel.zip), and make the adjustments to last months data. You will want to add the records in the incadd.zip file, replace records that are included in incchg.zip, and delete from your full file any records in incdel.zip. The key to all this is the FEC record number, which uniquely identifies each record in the file. You'll need to do the updates faithfully each month in order to avoid needing the full file again.
incadd.zip ( 4,400,000+ bytes) Additions to the individual contributions file this month. Be sure to also download or print Format Description
incchg.zip ( 59,000+ bytes) Changes to the individual contributions file this month - along with the Format Description
incdel.zip ( 759+ bytes) Deletions from the individual contributions file this month. See Format Description
itpas2.zip (2,260,000+ bytes)
This file contains each contribution or independent expenditure made by a PAC, party committee, candidate committee, or other federal committee to a candidate during the two year election cycle. The amount field is in EBCDIC format, i.e. if the value is negative, the right most column will contain a special character - ]= -0;j= -1;k= -2;L= -3;m= -4;n= -5;o= -6;p= -7;q= -8;and r= -9. It includes the ID number of the contributing committee and the ID number of the recipient. You will need to use the committee and candidate master files in conjunction with this file to set up a relational data base to analyze these data.
Format Description
itoth.zip (2,860,000+ bytes)
This file contains all transactions (contributions, transfers etc., among federal committees). As such, it includes all the data which appears in itpas2.zip, along with other information, including PAC contributions to party committees and party transfers from state to state or from the national party committees to their state committees. The amount field is in EBCDIC format, i.e. if the value is negative, the right most column will contain a special character - ]= -0;j= -1;k= -2;L= -3;m= -4;n= -5;o= -6;p= -7;q= -8;and r= -9. (Note that this file includes only federal transfers, not soft money transactions.)
Format Description
hstap1.zip (113,000+ bytes)
A fixed length, undelimited file with one record for each campaign for the U.S. House or Senate for the current 1995-96 election cycle. This file includes summary information about the financing of the campaign, including total receipts, the total coming from individuals, totals from each of six categories of Political Action Committees, totals from Party committees, campaign spending, cash on hand, and debts owed by the campaign. This file will be updated periodically when all information for 1996 candidates has been computerized for a common time period.
The Format Description is identical to the CANSUM94.zip file above. Currently, the file covers the period through October 16, 1996.
webl.zip
This file also has one record for each 1995-96 campaign, and it also contains summary financial information. The difference between "hstap1" (above) and "webl" is that this file is completely dependent on summary information reported by the campaign itself, rather than taking detailed information from candidate, PAC, or party committee reports. This means that the time period covered by this file may be more recent than for the current version of "hstap1". The cost of this timliness, though, is that some of the information available here is less precise than for "hstap1". For example, in "hstap1" you can see how much a campaign received from Corporate PACs or Labor PACs, while here there is only one value for the total received from "other political committees." This includes all PAC contributions, but it may also contain contributions from other candidates, and some other types of committees we don't typically think of as PACs. We can't do the full breakdowns until all the information about specific contributions has been entered into the computer. Moreover, in order to make information comparable, we only create "hstap1" files when everyone has submitted reports through a given time period (usually quarterly) and all detailed information has been process for that time. This means that "webl" will almost always contain more current information, while "hstap1" will contain the most recent comparable detailed information. This is about as clear as mud, but when you get lots of different committees filing reports on different schedules with different time delays in processing, things can get pretty complicated. We've tried to give you a choice here - use "webl" for the most up to date campaign summaries on a monthly basis, or use "hstap1" for more comprehensive summaries on a quarterly basis.
Be sure to download the Format Description so you can interpret the file.
We've added a new file containing summary information for PACs through October 16, 1996. This file, called pacsum96.zip contains one record for each PAC and has the same information as you find in pacsum94.zip listed above. It includes financial information from the PAC, e.g. pac receipts and spending, contributions to Senate and House candidates, contributions to Democrats, Republicans and other party candidates, contributions to incumbent members of Congress, challengers, and candidates in open seats.
Be sure to also download the Format Description which is also the same as pacsum94.
Since this file summarized detailed information about contributions to candidates, the time period covered by the file will only change when we have completed processing information for a complete reporting period. The next complete reporting period is the post-general report covering from October 17 through November 25. These reports should be completed sometime in January.

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