Methodology
how the numbers are made
elect.info joins US federal campaign-finance data with electoral geography so you can follow both the money and the vote. Here is where the data comes from, how the headline numbers are computed, and the lines we hold on privacy and honesty.
Data sources
- FEC — candidate, committee, and disbursement filings (the money).
- Redistricting Data Hub (RDH) — precinct-level election returns, aggregated to county and state.
- U.S. Census — American Community Survey (ACS) estimates and the CVAP special tabulation (citizen voting-age population by race).
How partisan lean is computed
Partisan lean is the two-party margin: (Democratic − Republican) ÷ total votes, shown as D+x or R+x. For counties and states it is aggregated up from RDH precinct returns (2020 presidential, roughly 97% precinct coverage) — the same signed metric at every geography level, so a precinct, its county, and its state all agree. It is a count of votes, not a prediction.
Counts, not dollars — places, not people
- Geography surfaces show vote counts and Census estimates, never dollar figures — money and geography are kept distinct.
- CVAP is the eligible electorate (citizens 18+), distinct from total population; composition figures describe places, not individuals.
- Comparisons are ecological — about geographies, not claims about any person. We do not infer or model an individual's protected attributes.
- Aggregates use minimum-cell suppression; no individual donor rows are surfaced.
- ACS figures are survey estimates with margins of error, labelled as such; Census jam-values are masked and read “no data,” never a false zero.
Coverage, corrections & provenance
We publish what we can stand behind. Live coverage metrics are on the data-coverage page; only attested data reaches public surfaces. If a page about you is wrong, you can claim it and submit a moderated right-of-response.