Methodology
How we collect and publish federal election data
The Candidate publishes sourced, neutral information on every federal candidate running in the current U.S. election cycle. This page explains where the FEC data comes from, how often it's refreshed, what we treat as verified, and how we stay nonpartisan.
Data sources — FEC data and public records
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is our authoritative primary source. Every candidate profile and race on this site is anchored to an FEC candidate identifier (the FEC_CANDIDATE_ID) and an FEC race tuple (office, state, district, cycle). When the FEC updates its bulk data, our records follow.
Right now, the FEC is the only public-record source loaded into the site. Enrichment from Wikidata, Ballotpedia, and curated editorial notes is on the way. Until that enrichment ships, candidate pages only display what the FEC record actually contains plus anything the candidate has submitted to us directly through a verified claim flow.
Every sourced field on a candidate profile carries the origin — FEC, candidate-provided, or editorial — so you can see at a glance which rows are pulled from public records and which are the candidate's own submitted content.
Update frequency
FEC bulk data is refreshed on a recurring cadence — in practice, roughly every few days during an active cycle. New candidate filings usually appear on the site within one business day of the FEC publishing them.
Candidate-submitted content (biography paragraphs, statements on issues, links to campaign sites) updates whenever the claimed candidate saves changes, subject to our moderation review. The candidate's own profile page shows a “Last updated” timestamp for each field so you know how fresh the information is.
Enrichment from third-party sources, once that pipeline ships, will be refreshed on its own cadence and will carry its own timestamps. We don't promise a fixed interval we can't meet — if a source lags, we'd rather say so than paper over it.
Sourced vs candidate-provided
Every candidate profile is split into two clearly labeled sections:
Sourced facts
Verified against a public record (today: the FEC). These include the candidate's legal name, the office they've filed for, the state and congressional district where applicable, their FEC candidate ID, and their principal campaign committee.
Each sourced fact carries a citation back to the upstream source and a timestamp for when we last refreshed it.
Candidate-provided content
Anything a verified candidate has written about themselves: biography, stances, policy statements, links to their campaign site. Clearly marked as such on every page where it appears.
Candidate-provided content is moderated against platform rules but is not a statement of fact by The Candidate — it's the candidate speaking in their own words.
When you see a fact on this site, you should always be able to tell which of those two buckets it came from. If a page ever makes that ambiguous, we consider it a bug — please tell us (see below).
Neutrality
The Candidate is nonpartisan. We do not endorse candidates, we do not accept payments in exchange for placement or favorable treatment, and we treat every qualifying federal candidate the same way in our coverage regardless of party.
The order candidates appear in within a race, their party labels, their incumbency flags, and their sourced biographical details are produced mechanically from public records. Editorial content, when it exists, is clearly marked as editorial and follows the rules laid out in our internal editorial policy (available on request).
If you believe a specific page on the site violates this commitment, we want to know (see corrections below).
Corrections
Found something wrong? Use our corrections form and include the URL of the page plus a specific description of what's incorrect, and (if possible) a link to the authoritative source. We review every correction by hand. A self-serve correction form is on the way.