Open Secrets data archives is now downloadable
Celebrating our 25th anniversary in 2008, the Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, the organization aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government. In short, CRP's mission is to:
Inform citizens about how money in politics affects their lives
Empower voters and activists by providing unbiased information
Advocate for a transparent and responsive government
We pursue our mission largely through our award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, which is the most comprehensive resource for campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. And for other organizations and news media, CRP's exclusive data powers their online features tracking money in politics—counting cash to make change.
CRP relies on financial support from a combination of foundation grants and individual contributions. The Center accepts no contributions from businesses, labor unions or trade associations.
For the first time in CRP's 26-year history, the nonprofit research group's most popular data archives are fully and freely downloadable for non-commercial purposes from the Center's website, OpenSecrets.org--a four-time Webby winner for best politics site online. OpenSecrets.org will remain the go-to independent source for most users interested in tracking money's political influence and, in fact, the site has some new general-interest features as of today. (More on those below.)The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org's Action Center at http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php:
CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees. CRP's researchers add value to Federal Election Commission data by cleaning up and categorizing contribution records. This allows for easier totaling by industry and company or organization, to measure special-interest influence.
LOBBYING: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they reported working on, dating to 1998. Industry codes have been applied to this data, as well.
PERSONAL FINANCES: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. The reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June, and the data will be available for download once CRP has keyed those reports.
527 ORGANIZATIONS: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for the shadowy issue-advocacy groups known as 527s, which can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals.
Link: http://www.opensecrets.org/