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Political Ad Spending: FEC Filing Records

A useful public record has an identity, a scope and a source. Research becomes more reliable when those elements travel with the number or statement being discussed.

Write down the claim first

Identify exactly what you want to know: who holds an office, whether someone appears on a ballot, what a committee reported spending, or how a member voted on a question. Each claim calls for a different source. A biography, a campaign website and a financial report can all be useful without answering the same question.

Keep identity, scope and date together

Record the entity identifier, jurisdiction, election or reporting period and source publication. These details prevent a correct fact from being attached to the wrong person, place or time. A name-only match can be misleading, especially when campaigns or institutions have changed names or when a person has sought several offices.

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2026 FEC independent expenditures

Political advertising filings

Search reported spending by sponsor, candidate, purpose or payee, then open the source filing.

More filters

Finance filings do not establish ad creative, audiences, impressions or whether anyone saw an ad.

Source-row directory

25,522 matching records

Page 1 of 1,702 · current rows first; source anomalies and historical rows last

FILING, NOT CREATIVE

A searchable sponsor record with a hard evidence boundary.

Each page preserves one current or retained historical FEC independent-expenditure filing row. Historical rows remain accessible but are excluded from current spending totals. A filing may describe advertising, mail, calls, canvassing, production, or another expressly advocated communication or activity. Electionpedia does not claim that every row contains a viewable ad creative.

Amendment policy543 superseded filing versions excluded from current rowsRetained history238 earlier public rows remain accessible and excluded from current spending totalsQuarantined spending rows174 current rows excluded from spending totalsSource-date alerts1,185 import/receipt-date anomalies retained and flaggedAPIJSON records ↗

Source: Federal Election Commission bulk data ↗, checked Oct 16, 2026. Purpose and payee text reproduce filer-supplied source fields. Electionpedia does not infer a platform, audience, targeting geography, creative content, or service actually delivered from those fields.

About these records and sources

Search current 2026 FEC independent-expenditure rows and retained historical records. Historical rows are excluded from current spending totals. The directory preserves the filer's purpose and payee text, but never pretends a finance filing contains the ad creative, audience, or proof that anyone saw it.

Current FEC filing rows25,284
Historical rows retained238
Outside spenders across all rows725
Named candidates across all rows743
All rows with purpose text25,519
WHAT THE FILING PROVES

A filer reported this spending row.

The page can reproduce the spender, candidate, amount, position code, dates, purpose, payee, election fields, and exact FEC filing image.

WHAT IT DOES NOT PROVE

What the creative said—or who saw it.

An independent-expenditure filing proves only that the filer reported the fields shown. It does not prove coordination, persuasion, effectiveness, audience exposure, candidate approval, motive, or wrongdoing.