Open FEC Political Donations Data in a Spreadsheet
The U.S. Federal Election Commission regularly releases data on how political candidates and committees raise and spend money in federal elections. This service provides important transparency into money in politics. However, the raw data is very messy and challenging to work with. Historically a big challenge was just finding a way to open and work with massive files in a spreadsheet. Given the size and complexity of many of the files, many can't be opened in a traditional spreadsheet like Excel. Row Zero is a next-gen spreadsheet built for big data that makes it easy to open and analyze FEC campaign finance data in a spreadsheet. For this post, we'll explore campaign contributions by individual donors, committees, and PACs. We've already uploaded and formatted the file and have done a basic analysis which you can access here: 2024 U.S. Federal Election Contributions FEC Dataset.
NOTE: This post is based on data from the FEC campaign finance data set as of 11/5/2024. The dataset may be missing the full cycle's data and/or there may be flaws in the analysis. FEC.gov indicates that the dataset only includes donations of at least $200, but the dataset clearly includes many donations under $200. You're encouraged to visit FEC.gov to access the latest data and resolve issues you find in the dataset or the analysis.
- How to Open FEC Campaign Finance Data in a Spreadsheet
- Political Donor Lookup
- Donations by State
- Breakdown of Donation Amounts
- Donations by Occupation
- Donations to Candidates and Committees
- Conclusion
How to Open FEC Campaign Finance Data in a Spreadsheet
We've already loaded the political contributions datasets from 11/5/24 (the day of the 2024 election) into Row Zero if you want to skip ahead: U.S. 2024 Election Political Donation Dataset. Read on to see how to open FEC datasets in a spreadsheet in Row Zero.
Access the latest file on the Bulk Data page on FEC.gov. Scroll down, choose the file you want and click the link to download. Most files will download as a .zip of .txt files.
Open up a Row Zero workbook: Login or sign up for free and open a workbook.
Import the .ZIP file: Click Data in the top navigation to import a file and then select the ZIP file you downloaded and click Import.
Row Zero will automatically unzip and merge the txt files into one file and then open as a spreadsheet.
Given the size of the dataset, you'll likely want to add filters and freeze the first row to make it easier to search and analyze the data. To add filters, select the the data (or hit Ctrl + A) and go to Data, Filter. Another good step for analyzing the FEC data is to create a pivot table to explore various slices of the data.
Political Donor Lookup
You can search political donations and campaign contributions by name of donor using the Individual Donations - Raw Data tab in the spreadsheet. Just filter the Name column to see a row for each contribution for a given name.
To see TOTAL political contributions by donor for the 2024 federal election cycle, we've created a pivot table to look up total political donations by name across all federal election campaigns.
Notes:
- The Raw Data tab includes some contributions by candidates, organizations, and committees. To see just individual donations, filter the column ENTITY_TP to just IND for individuals.
- While there are certainly different people with the same name, there are also many instances of the same person with slightly different names. For example the largest donor in the 2024 election cycle according to the FEC dataset was Timothy Mellon of Wyoming. His name is listed as both "Mellon, Timothy" and "Mellon, Timothy Mr." in the data across multiple entries. A good way to check this is to reference the City, State, and Zip Code columns. Also note, that the same donor sometimes has contributions tagged from different locations, different employers, and different occupations.
Political Donations by State of Residence
Explore our breakdown of Political Donations by State to Federal Campaigns 
The data reveals a few interesting takeaways:
- It appears that about 1% of U.S. residents showed up in the FEC dataset, contributing an average of about $20 to federal election campaigns in 2024. Note the dataset may not include all small dollar donations.
- Swing states like Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, etc. do not have higher political donor activity from their residents compared to other states, even though this is where much of the attention and dollars were spent in the 2024 presidential election. The reason is much of the dollars flowed in from other states.
- Wyoming stands out in the data because it's the home of the largest individual donor in the 2024 election - Timothy Mellon is listed as a resident of Wyoming and according to the FEC data, appears to have donated more than $150 million in the 2024 election cycle including $125 million to the Make America Great Again Inc committee. This total is dramatically more than any other individual contributed to any candidate or committee according to FEC data so it skews Wyoming's state data
- DC stands out for the most politically active residents in terms of campaign contributions.
Breakdown of Donation Amounts
Here's a breakdown of most common amount contributed with each political donation according to the FEC dataset. Keep in mind that FEC.gov indicates that the dataset only includes donations of at least $200, but the dataset clearly includes many donations under $200 so this may not fully reflect small dollar donations.
Most Donations by Donation Amount
The most common donation amount was $25. There was a lot of attention in the election cycle placed on the number 47 with many donation requests specifically soliciting $47 donations. The number clearly stands out more than you would otherwise expect, but $47 does not crack the top 20 amounts.
Most Dollars by Donation Amount
The most dollars donated came from $3,300 donations which is the maximum donation allowed for individual contribution to candidate committees. Note, those limits do not apply to political action committees. You can see the most popular donation amount barely makes it into the top 25 for total dollars donated, showing the impact of large donations in the 2024 election. In fact, 2 donations of $50 million offset all 3.9 million $25 dollar donations.
Political Donations by Occupation
Here's a breakdown of Political Donations by Occupation to Federal Campaigns 
A few notes:
- The data is self-reported and isn't normalized so there are multiple entries for the same occupation (e.g. CEO and Chief Executive Officer).
- Retired folks appear to make up the largest amount of donations both in terms of individual donors and dollars.
- "Not Employed" ranks second in political contributions
- Business leaders, executives, and investors stand out for outsized contribution amounts.
Donations to Candidates
View the Committees tab to see the total dollar individual donations to each campaign and committee according to the FEC dataset. It's challenging to truly see the total amount of money donated to support a candidate in the 2024 election. We can see the total contributions directly to a campaign. However, it's clear that the majority of donors and dollars went to committees and PACs that support the candidates, especially at the presidential level. Even small dollar individual donors were more likely to contribute to a PAC like Make America Great Again Inc. versus contribute to the corresponding candidate.
This makes it nearly impossible to track down where all of the money is coming from or going to in federal elections. And this is across the political spectrum for Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Presidential, House, and Senate races.
Donations to All Committee Types (Candidate, PAC, Super PAC, etc.)
As you can see, the majority of the money donated does not go to specific candidates but rather political action committees that are aligned with the candidates.
Donations to Specific Candidate Campaigns
While it's unsurprising to see the Harris campaign receiving the most contributions, it's very surprising to see the Trump campaign not cracking the top 10 and falling well short of donations received by Nikki Haley. The reason, as shown above, appears to be that much of the efforts to support the Trump campaign were donated to a committee like Make America Great Again Inc.
As you can see, there were significantly more donors and dollars for Trump aligned PACs than donations to Donald Trump the candidate. The same is true for donations to Kamala Harris. More money flowed to Harris-aligned PACs than to the official Harris for President committee for the candidate.
NOTE: FEC.gov indicates that the dataset only includes donations of at least $200, but the dataset clearly includes many donations under $200 so this may not fully reflect small dollar donations.
Disclaimer - Limitations, Discrepancies and Errors in FEC Data and Analysis
This post is based on data from the FEC campaign finance data set as of 11/5/2024. The dataset may be missing the full cycle's data and/or there may be flaws in the raw data or in the analysis. FEC.gov indicates that the dataset only includes donations of at least $200, but the dataset clearly includes many donations under $200. The FEC dataset is very messy with multiple entries for the same person. The data appears to all be self-reported so individuals report different information (i.e. Occupation or even their name) across different contributions making it very challenging to analyze the data. You're encouraged to visit FEC.gov to access the latest data and resolve issues you find in the dataset or the analysis. If you need help opening a file in Row Zero or working with the data in Row Zero, please contact us for support.
Conclusion
The 2024 U.S. elections set records for money raised and spent. The FEC campaign finance data provides significant transparency into political contributions, but the datasets are challenging to work with and analyze. If you want to open and analyze FEC data in a spreadsheet, Row Zero is your best bet. You can try Row Zero for free and/or explore the FEC individual contributions dataset in our spreadsheet template.
Open FEC Political Donations Data in a Spreadsheet