Campaign finance data for federal offices is available from the Federal Election Commission. http://www.fec.gov
State campaign finance data is usually available from the office of the Secretary of State for each state. Here is Ohio's: http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/Campaign%20Finance/Database.aspx (You can search for me in there. I ran for State Rep in 2004.) Often the data is posted online within hours or days after each of the filing deadlines. Journalists, activists, campaign opponents, political scientists, professional fundraisers, and more will mine it to learn about who is paying for what and where they are spending their money. My original idea was to just pull the information for my congressman and build a simple geo graph to visualize how much out of state funding he was getting, but I quickly realized the data is highly interconnected (candidates give money to each other, and to PAC's, and the PAC's then distribute money back to candidates and it gets really confusing), some people give to more than one candidate, other's give to both parties, and others can be identified as all working for the same organization. [Some of those games are played to hide the true origin of the money from the casual political investigator.] The data used to be available in CSV format, it probably still is (I haven't tried to download it in a while)... > Hey Rick, > > Do you know the whereabouts of any of this data? > > On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 5:51 AM, Rick Otten <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi Tim, >> >> I have zero time to either write much, or even explore new ideas these >> days, but I think an area that would be very interesting to map into a >> graph model is campaign finance. >> >> Showing the relationship of donors to politicians and their committees >> and the fiscal relationships between politicians could provide great >> insights into some of the "why" things happen the way they do. >> >> You could also geocode the donors and politicians (their addresses are >> in the reports), and you could show employers on the graph (employers >> are listed in the US forms as well). >> >> If someone has the time and is looking for a good application of how to >> use Open Data with a graph model, that is a project I would vote for. >> I've been wanting to do it ever since the last election, but can't seem >> to find the time to sit down, download the reports, and feed them into a >> model or visualization tool. >> >> >> > Hi all, >> > >> > Sorry if this is off topic. I am the editor of the Open Data >> Manual[0]. >> > It's >> > an ever improving manual on how to go about open data. At the moment, >> it's >> > mostly focused on government data, but that is changing. >> > >> > A great enhancement would be some information on graphs. In >> particular, >> an >> > outline of moving data housed in relational tables into a graph would >> be >> > excellent. The manual has a large readership and it could be a great >> way >> > to >> > become a published author.* If you would like to assist, please email >> me >> > off the list. >> > >> > Tim McNamara >> > Professional \\ paperlessprojects.com >> > Personal \\ @timClicks <http://twitter.com/timClicks> | >> > timmcnamara.co.nz >> > >> > [0] http://opendatamanual.org >> > >> > * We're investigating options for creating printed material, but that >> > hasn't >> > happened yet. >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Neo4j mailing list >> > [email protected] >> > https://lists.neo4j.org/mailman/listinfo/user >> > >> >> >> -- >> Rick Otten >> [email protected] >> O=='=+ >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Neo4j mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.neo4j.org/mailman/listinfo/user >> > _______________________________________________ > Neo4j mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.neo4j.org/mailman/listinfo/user > -- Rick Otten [email protected] O=='=+ _______________________________________________ Neo4j mailing list [email protected] https://lists.neo4j.org/mailman/listinfo/user
