Methodology

Where The Data Comes From

Coffers uses public Federal Election Commission data, including FEC summary files, transaction files, and independent-expenditure data. The current product focuses on the 2025-2026 cycle.

Summary Metrics And Transaction Analytics

Some headline fundraising and spending figures come from FEC summary files. Other views use transaction-level records so users can inspect contributors, vendors, geography, dates, and spending patterns. These layers answer different questions, so transaction drill-downs may not add up to summary totals.

Vendor Normalization

FEC spending records often refer to the same vendor in several slightly different ways. Coffers groups known variants conservatively and keeps raw source names available for review. Ambiguous entities are not merged just to make charts tidier.

Spending Categorization

Coffers assigns spending categories where there is enough evidence to do so. Uncategorized spending remains visible. These categories are Coffers' analytical labels, not FEC categories.

Freshness And Limits

Campaign-finance data changes as filings, amendments, and source files are processed. Coffers uses source-specific refreshed dates where practical instead of promising a fixed update cadence.

Candidate and contest topline metrics use FEC WEBL summary totals when available and may show a "covered through" date. Vendor, contribution, geography, and category views use itemized FEC transaction records; those records can lag source filings and may not carry a single reliable page-level refresh timestamp.

Known limitations include filing lag, amended reports, inconsistent names, missing party fields, complex committee relationships, and vendor or category coverage that improves over time.