I am Solomon Kahn, Harvard Fellow, visualizer of who gives money to US federal politicians. Ask me where your politician raises money from, and I'll show you using my newly launched visualization. AMA!

So, if I am a raging progressive, but work for a large bank, my private contribution will come in under Finance, right?

Correct!

edit: Elaborating a bit since this question is now getting popular.

Individual donations are only for people who donate more than $200, and have to individually report to the FEC. For people who work at a bank and donate $25 to their favorite candidate, those would be included under "Small Money Donors."

To your point that industry classification doesn't encapsulate all the information we might be interested in about a person, you're 100% correct. Industry classification doesn't even always let you know what side of an issue a company is on. Alternative energy companies working to fight climate change and big oil companies are in the same "Energy" industry.

Ultimately, the summary view is just that, a summary. It doesn't tell you everything you need to know, and hides a lot of nuance, but gives you a good high level overview. To get more details, you should click the legend items, and see the specific companies, and individual people in those companies, who are making the donations.

Isn't that a bit misleading?

Why would it be? You work for a large bank, ergo you work in finance.

Because it says finance donated to them making people think it was companies and not individuals

I completely understand that it can be ambiguous at first glance, although there are a couple of ways I tried to make this clear.

In the summary view, you can see the donations coming from corporate PACs vs. Individuals by toggling the menu item. Another way is, when you click through the legend, you can see the companies and individuals who are donating. Lastly, it's all explained in depth in the methodology section.

Corporations are simply a collection of individuals and can't legally donate to campaigns.

Corporations can now donate to campaigns, although they typically do not donate directly.

Yes, it absolutely is. So is his intro in which he calls this "an incredibly powerful tool."

Next.

Ouch! You probably didn't realize there is some additional functionality that isn't immediately clear unless you check out the tutorial.

You can click on the bar chart to see subsectors. You can also click on any legend item to see the companies that make up that total. Lastly, you can click on any company to see the individual people who made those donations.

Finally, if you find something interesting, you can submit it and we'll work to get it in front of journalists.

Maybe reconsider your comment?

I get that this isn't a logical request (Abe Lincoln) , but it made me think of a question that you might be able to answer....

Did politicians , back then and earlier, need to raise money to fund their campaigns? Any good books to recommend on how campaigns were run during the early days of our democracy?

This is a really amazing question, and I don't actually know the answer. I'm going to do some digging on this, but if you find out the answer, please PM me and let me know.

Edit: FYI, I just posted this question on r/AskHistorians, we'll see if we get any interesting answers https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4kkkes/how_did_us_politicians_in_the_time_of_abraham/

I feel that it might be quite rare for a Harvard-educated professor to say that they don't know something about their field. Bravo! Thank you for being willing to admit that even the most advanced of us don't have all the answers.

A couple of things:

First, thanks for the kind words!

Next, I've actually found the opposite. The most successful and accomplished people I know are happy to publicly admit when they don't know things. I have a whole theory about why, if you want me to go into more details.

Lastly, I'm not a professor, just a fellow :)

Ok, why?

Two main reasons:

1) When you admit you don't know things, people explain them to you, and you learn things a lot faster than people who don't ask the questions.

2) Once you get to a certain point in life, you stop being worried about whether people will think you're smart or not, so you don't feel self conscious about asking potentially stupid questions

Probably because being full of shit is bad for your credibility. Being able to acknowledge you don't know something fosters personal development. The whole premise of higher education beyond undergrad is being able to find an answer for something you don't know.

Also, if you're a Harvard professor or fellow, and you try to bullshit, there's probably someone who actually knows close by.

Very true!

very cool. but what is "Unknown" category?

edit: and "Other"...the named categories, that's expected, but the vague ones...i guess it doesn't seem all that much, maybe $60 from "The Committee to Appoint Green Lantern for Supreme Court Justice" or something; especially for lesser members of Congress, but when you get to the Big Boys...that Other category can add up. What's in Other? And Unknown?

The FEC requires that people list their occupation and employer on campaign contributions. Sometimes it's clear what sector and industry that leads to, and sometimes it's not.

For big companies like Google, it's easy to place donations in the "Technology" industry, but for for smaller companies, people who don't have employers listed, or ambiguous occupations like Student, they are listed in "Unknown" as an industry.

re-naming 'Unknown' to Miscellaneous would make it easier for folks to understand. It also looks less shady.

EDIT: Although 'Unknown' is technically correct, it's just not a great word. Maybe something like 'Uncategorized' is better.

Not a bad idea.

You can also click the legend items to see what makes up those larger numbers. So, if you click on "Unknown", you can see exactly where those numbers are coming from.

Hillary Clinton has nearly 24 million dollars in money received from "Unknown" and "Other" sources.. what the actual f***...

Click on those legend items and you'll see more details. It's sources where we don't know what industry their companies are in, not that we don't know who donated.

Hello, Mr. Kahn! As a government student and statistics nerd, this new tool is going to be getting a lot of use from me in the future! Thank you for this. My question for you is this: Are there any aspirations you have for this resource in the world of campaigning or media reporting? If so, do you see this developing into some sort of "watch-dog" like source, similar to Politifact?

Yes! The goal for this project is to have both citizens and journalists use it to understand the fundraising behavior of politicians.

It includes a place for people to submit the interesting (or scandalous) things they find on the site, which we will work to get in front of journalists. That part could be pretty interesting!

What is the most surprising or significant thing you've discovered in all this data?

To me, the most significant thing is how easy it is to clearly see where politicians are raising money from.

We as a society have so many strong feelings about money in politics, but people have those feelings based on vague ideas, not specific numbers. Hopefully this tool help people come to their own conclusions about money in politics coming from a place of understanding about how much money is being donated and by whom.

Thanks for doing this AMA. What about Hilary Clinton?

Here you go! http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00000019-Hillary-Clinton#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

I think the issue might have been the spelling of Hillary vs. Hilary :)

Chris Christie?

Here you go! http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00037008-Chris-Christie#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

Fuck. Unknown is a large amount.

If you click on Unknown in the legend, you'll see many of those are students, homemakers, and people whose employers aren't listed.

Unknown just means that we don't know which industry the donations come from, not that we don't know who was doing the donating.

Have you considered cross-referencing donor names with data on government contractors from the Office of Management and Budget? It would be interesting to see if the people/companies donating to different candidates are also heavily reliant on government spending. The OMB data also comes with NAICS codes, PSCs, and DUNS numbers so you have the opportunity to further build out the industry component and shrink that "Unknown" category a bit.

I haven't, but that would be interesting!

Here's an open copy of the database if anyone want to pick this up:

https://github.com/Solomon/opensecrets_to_postgres

If I may, I want to ask an unrelated question. Your name caught my eye. Are you aware of a fantasy-character, by a writer named R.E Howard, called Solomon Kane?

Sorry, for not being relevant but he's my favourite author, even though it's pulp fiction.

I just had to ask.

It was mentioned once to me, and I've been meaning to follow up and read the book, but haven't done it yet. Thanks for the reminder to check out the book!

Another not so relevant question: Do people ever conflate your name with Salman Kahn of Kahn Academy?

Very infrequently.

Scrolled down to see if anyone else made the same mistake as me. Sorry! The discussion and your responses are great and I won't be mixing you two up in the future!

No worries, and thanks!

Is this the book I should be getting?

https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Tales-Solomon-Kane-ebook/dp/B000FC1R28?ie=UTF8&qid=1463952322&ref_=la_B000AP5LHW_1_6&s=books&sr=1-6

Any data on Vermin Supreme?

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any.

Where does Elizabeth Warren get her funding? I really like her so I'm a little scared to ask, but I still really appreciate what you are doing.

Here you go! http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00033492-Elizabeth-Warren#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2012/sector/all/

Make sure to click on the legend items, so you can see the individual companies and people who made the donations.

1. Any plans to do it for other countries?

2. Need any technical help?

The code will be open source, so people can modify for other countries.

Once I open up the code (need to do a bit of cleanup, but soon), pull requests will be welcome!

What technologies is this based on?

The database is postgresql, the application is Ruby on Rails, and the visualization is in d3.js

And the front end is bootstrap ;) good work on it. If it's going public on github, I'll definitely star it!

Thanks!

What are you using for your data sources and what do you intend to do with your visualizations?

I've got two main data sources.

The first is the OpenSecrets bulk data. They take the raw FEC data, do some cleaning, and then attach the sector and industry information wherever they can.

However, they don't have data on small money donors, only donors who pass the $200 reporting threshold. So, for the small money donors, I get the data from the FEC directly.

You can see all the details in the methodology section of any politician page if you scroll down to the bottom of the page: http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00001127-Joseph-Crowley#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

Can you explain what "small money donors" really means?

If you donate less than $200 to a politician during an election cycle, they are not required to disclose your name and information to the FEC. Instead, they are able to lump all the sub-$200 donations together, into one "Unitemized Contributions" line item.

Since "Unitemized Contributions" doesn't mean anything to normal people, I've renamed it "small money donors."

Hello Dr. Kahn, thank-you for your time today. I have two questions;

Who are the primary funders of Jerrold Nadler?

How much influence do finders of politicians hold with the campaigns they donate to?

First, I'm just a Mr., not a Dr. :)

As far as how much influence political funders hold with the campaigns they donate to, most people would say too much.

From the visualization, using this way of viewing Jerrold Nadler, you can see per election cycle what percentage of his contributions come from each industry: http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00000939-Jerrold-Nadler#group/combined/independent/false/display/percent/cycle/2014/sector/all/

His top 3 are Finance, Labor, and Lawyers.

How about Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstien the sitting CA senators?

No problem!

Make sure to click around the election cycles, and legend items to dig into anything you find interesting.

Here's Barbara Boxer: http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00006692-Barbara-Boxer#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2010/sector/all/

Here's Dianne Feinstein: http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00007364-Dianne-Feinstein#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

Is it just me or are these amounts smaller than you'd expect? Like people talk about millionaires and billionaires but these are like a combined 100k or so

I love your comment, because it shows just how little people have connection to the actual numbers when things like this are discussed.

Some campaigns raise millions or hundreds of millions, some raise thousands. With this tool, you can see which are which.

Is it just me, or is this too general to be insightful? Finance/Real Estate, Lawyers/Lobbyists. What am I supposed to do with this information?

You can click either the sectors in the barchart to get information about subsectors, or click on the legend to get the individual companies that make up the legend sectors.

Check out the tutorial for more information on the functionality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCqQjxl2H4A

Do you have Ron Paul from 2012?

Here's Ron Paul's 2012 campaign!

http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00005906-Ron-Paul#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2012/sector/all/

Favourite colour?

I'm liking this one today: http://www.color-hex.com/color/1693a5

Hello sir, do you have the info for Tim Huelskamp, Republican senator from Kansas? And also The Donald?

Here's the visualization for Tim Huelskamp: http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00027649-Tim-Huelskamp#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

Also, here's Donald Trump: http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00023864-Donald-Trump#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

Trump doesn't have a great view here because he's financed his campaign primarily through loans instead of contributions, which don't show up in the same way.

In your opinion, what is the most staggering information you have found so far?

For my congressman, I found that Blackstone went from giving no money in one election cycle, to becoming his largest single donor in the next election cycle, when 14 people who never donated to him before maxed out donations in a single day.

Rand Paul?

Here you go, Rand Paul!

http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00030836-Rand-Paul#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

Two questions for you, if I may!

I'm studying computer science now, so I'm really curious what is keeping all of this running (and what languages you're using).

My second question is: Do you think using exclusively public funding of campaigns would be a good change for the US to pursue? (I am really ignorant about the topic, but this is something I sometimes see mentioned.)

I think having public funding of elections would be a great change, and I think there are lots of smart ways to implement that.

For technology, the database is postgresql, the site plumbing is Ruby on Rails, and the visualization is d3.js.

[removed]

Thanks?

Hey Solomon,

Appreciate you doing this! I'm just wondering: Is it giving voters meaningful information? Let me elaborate...

A search for Donald Trump, for example, show he's raised a total of $6,382,702.

But a quick browse of OpenSecrets shows that Our Principles PAC, a conservative super PAC, has raised almost $19 million for the purpose of "opposing Trump". It's not supporting a specific candidate, but is rather opposing one.

That's a very large sum of money that has entered the political arena, 18 times more than has been raised by super PACs supporting Trump, and 3 times more than the total raised funds in support of Trump that you've listed in your site.

(Incidentally, the Great America PAC has raised $1.2 million in support of Trump according to OpenSecrets, but it doesn't appear to be listed in the site either. Probably just old data, but you might want to get that updated if you're doing a big media push.)

Meanwhile, Sheldon Adelson has apparently said he was willing to contribute more than $100 million to help Trump get elected. A sum that large can not be in the form of a direct contribution, and will most likely go into one or a variety of super PACs.

If those PACs state they oppose Hillary Clinton, rather than that they support Donald Trump, how would a voter browsing your website recognize that one person had contributed such a vast sum of money essentially to getting Trump elected?

And if money raised for super PACs in opposition to candidates is not included in the visualization, is this a useful depiction of where each candidate gets their financial support, or simply half a finished product that could end up misleading voters more than informing them?

(Apologies if there's a way to visualize money raised in opposition to specific candidates, I didn't find it, but without identifying that cash you're missing half the money in politics -- in some cases, more.)

---

Edit: Interestingly, $11.8 million has been spent by PACs supporting Trump, while $36.8 million has been spent by PACs opposing him. So roughly 75% of the PAC money spent in this campaign cycle surrounding Trump is not included in this visualization, despite being in the OpenSecrets dataset.

For anyone interested, a detailed breakdown of that spending can be viewed on OpenSecrets itself, as well as breakdowns of total candidate funding by industry, geography, demographic, and recipient.

The same reports are available for all the candidates. Here are Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

If you're considering making a donation today, please consider supporting the work of OpenSecrets by donating to the Center for Responsive Politics. They run the site and are a registered 501c3 with an excellent rating from CharityNavigator.

Hey, great question.

This tool will actually capture the spending of SuperPACs against candidates, just not their fundraising. So, if you raised $100 Million against Trump, but haven't spent it, you wouldn't see it in this tool.

To turn on that view, click on the options button on the visualization, and toggle independent expenditures.

To answer your overall question, there is still some money that this doesn't capture. In particular, the "non profits" such as Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, is considered a social welfare non profit, and doesn't have to report its donors, etc...

I think the information is still meaningful, even if it's not complete.

Does you database update automatically? Post script. You did a terrific job.

No, it's unfortunately a pretty time intensive process.

Reply to Post script: thanks! Much appreciated!

Mr. Kahn, any plans to do a version of this for state legislatures or governorships? Would such a thing even be possible?

For some it would be possible, for some it wouldn't be possible. It depends if states require people to list their employer when donating money.

The code will soon be open source, so anyone who wants to modify it for other states /governments, they will be able to do that easily!

Under Hillary Clinton>2016>Unknown>Homemaker, I keep seeing the number $2,700. Why? Do homemakers really usually donate this much to a presidential campaign?

Great question! The reason you see $2,700 so often is because that is the maximum amount you can directly donate to a candidate per election. It's not just homemakers, it's all professions where you see $2,700 donations.

[deleted]

I think any way you summarize things loses some nuance, but I think in general, classification by employment industry is the one area people would be most interested in seeing in a summary view.

I think the average person doesn't really know what's going on in the campaign finance system. Even I don't know everything that's going on. The laws, corporate structures, and reporting requirements are really complicated. Companies give money to trade groups that donate to non-profits that can spend on elections without disclosure. The system is built to hide that kind of behavior.

Can we see Ted Cruz? Thanks.

Here you go! http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00033085-Ted-Cruz#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

So no governors? Tried Kate Brown and Butch Otter to no avail. Shame that, governors have a greater direct impact in peoples day to day lives.

It's more of a data availability issue than a desire issue. Each state has different ways of running their campaign finance system, and different levels of making that data available to people like me.

The code will be open source, so if people are interested, they could take the overall framework and make it work for their particular states.

Is there a correlation between funding sources and election outcome? Does a candidate have better or worse "chance" of being elected depending on where their funds come from?

I'm not sure, but it's an interesting analysis to run.

Here's a copy of the database, for anyone interested in finding out the answer to this question: https://github.com/Solomon/opensecrets_to_postgres

So if I work as a staff attorney for a tech company, I'm lumped in with lobbyists?

You would be listed in the technology industry if you donated over $200 to a candidate. It's based on the employer, not the role. Same thing with accountants not listed in the financial sector if they work at a tech company.

Jim Renacci, do you do state level politicians too?

We don't do state politicians, only federal.

Here's Jim Renacci! http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00031127-Jim-Renacci#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

Why did you change the color on Hillary's Small money donors?

On Trump and Sanders its Blue on hers Businesses are blue and Small money donors are green, the opposite of all the others I looked at.

If you look at more politicians, you'll see that the actual color for any specific industry is pretty random. It has to do with the ranking, not the industry name.

Blue is the industry that has given the most over time, so for candidates with blue Small Money donors, it's because their small money donors have given more than any other specific industry.

Will this be extended to other countries the UK in particular?

The code will be open source, so people can take the framework and put it on top of data from other countries!

How about Bobby L. Rush? He is an Illinois Senator.

Here's Bobby Rush, and in particular, here's the election cycle where he beat Barack Obama in the primaries!

http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00004887-Bobby-L-Rush#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2000/sector/all/

What's a hypotenuse?

It's the long side of a right triangle.

Congressman Dr. Raul Ruiz (D - CA)?

Here you go!

http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00033510-Raul-Ruiz#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

Representative David Scott?

Enjoy! Make sure to click around the legend items to see the individual companies and people who donated :)

http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00024871-David-Scott#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

Do any of these numbers include money from PACs or SuperPACs? I think that they should because they have as much of an effect if not more due to the amounts of money that can be donated. Thank you so much for this great new resource!

They include donations from PACs, and they can also include spending by SuperPACs, but the SuperPAC spending is not included by default, because it messes up more politicians than it adds value to. One of the next features on the site will do a better job choosing to turn it on by default for some candidates, and not for others.

If you go to options at the top of a politician's page, you can turn it on.

Awesome! I did not realize that was an option. Thank you very much!

You're welcome!

Do you use the Law of Attraction at all?

Not on purpose.

Lamar Alexander?

Here you go, Lamar Alexander:

http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00009888-Lamar-Alexander#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2014/sector/all/

Make sure to click through on the legend items to get the specific companies and people making the donations!

I've just started exploring, and I've come across a couple of negative numbers. Does that mean that the politician has contributed to something else?

Negative numbers mean that they refunded money they raised in previous election cycles.

This is amazing. Thank you. Who do you feel is the most purchased politician?

I don't think it's a matter of one single politician being the most or least corrupt. I think it's about having a system that is set up with bad incentives. It's about a system where it's impossible to make decisions without thinking about how it affects your fundraising.

Off-topic, I know, but what do you think about Harvard's new anti-club-policy?

I've never been an undergraduate at Harvard, and I actually live in NY and have a full time job, so I have no connection to the campus. This is just my side project. I don't know much about what's going on with the whole anti-club policy.

Have any of the candidates a$ked you to censor this information, yet?

No.

Why did Hillary raise approximately twice as much money in 2008 as she did for her presidential campaign?

From your site: "In 2008, Hillary Clinton (D) ran for Senate in NY, against nobody. This was not an election year, so no candidate won."

In 2008, she ran for President in the democratic race, and lost in the primary. She had multiple campaign committees active that year, and the system picked the senate one to display as a description, although the funding comes from all sources that election cycle, including the presidential race.

There's a bit of randomness to the way the system displays information in cases like this, which is a bug I intend to fix.

The viz is cool,but why are color categories different for each candidate? If Blue is "unknown" on one candidate, why is it suddenly green for another candidate?

It has to do with which industry has donated the most to the candidate.

What did you think of James Purefoy's performance playing you as a Puritan avenger in the 2009 film based on your life?

link?

This is so interesting - great job!

Also: unemployed people donate to Donald Trump? Are they mad?

Many people who are technically unemployed still have money. For example, if you are retired, or if your spouse works, you might have a lot of money, but list yourself as unemployed.

I don't have a particular person I want to ask about, but I've always wanted to ask this question so here goes.

Given that the population effectively doubles after every 40 years or so, what has the American government generally done with the extra tax revenue?

I actually built another visualization of the US Budget that can help you answer that question! (bet you didn't see that coming!)

Check it out here: http://www.solomonkahn.com/us_budget

How did you create the visualizations and present the data? Are you using R and ggplot2? (Background: I'm a college senior interested in data science!)

The visualizations are built in d3.js, the site is built using Ruby on Rails

Hey thanks for doing this! I know it says congress and Sentate but do you have any information on Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL)?

If not I'd be interested to see Elizabeth Warren.

Sorry, no info for Governors, but here is Elizabeth Warren! Even more interesting, here is a view of who donated to her senate campaign from the financial industry.

http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00033492-Elizabeth-Warren#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2012/sector/all/contributions/Finance%2FInsur%2FRealEst

Great service. So...is there a way to see all the money ever spent on losing candidates?

The database is open source, so anyone could use that data to run a query and get the information you are looking for:

https://github.com/Solomon/opensecrets_to_postgres

May we please see Debbie Wasserman Schultz?

Here you go!

http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00026106-Debbie-Wasserman-Schultz#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2016/sector/all/

Interestingly enough, for some reason her contributions from labor tanked after 2012: http://www.explorecampaignfinance.com/politicians/N00026106-Debbie-Wasserman-Schultz#group/combined/independent/false/display/total/cycle/2012/sector/Labor

What a name, why did your parents call you that? :P

I was named after my great grandfather, Solomon, who passed away right before I was born.

He was a pretty cool guy, I've got a lot to live up to.