Announcing the New York Times Campaign Finance API

When we first started talking about creating and releasing APIs for databases collected by The Times, campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission was a natural choice. The upcoming presidential election has seen record fund-raising by the candidates and a host of new donors. Now we want our users to be able to analyze and reuse some of the data we’ve been looking at while reporting on the campaign.

The Campaign Finance map on NYTimes.comThe Campaign Finance map on NYTimes.com — now you can make your own

The initial version of the Campaign Finance API offers overall figures for presidential candidates, as well as state-by-state and ZIP code totals for specific candidates. In addition, the API supports a contributor name search using any of the following parameters: first name, last name and ZIP code.

The state and ZIP code totals include records that contain actual state abbreviations and actual ZIP codes; you won’t find totals for states labeled “ZZ” or other nonstandard codes. See the API documentation for more details.

Keep in mind that neither the donor search results nor the state/ZIP totals include every donation. Regulations require candidates to itemize only those donors whose total contributions for the election exceed $200, and both campaigns have raised substantial sums from small donors.

The data is based on filings with the FEC, which has been compiling and releasing data for more than two decades. Our API data reflects the electronic filings submitted by the presidential campaigns. The data will be updated as new filings become available; there will be two more filings prior to the election and then another due on Dec. 4, 2008.

Before you can use Times APIs, you’ll need to agree to our Terms of Use and register for a key. This modest initial release will be a foundation for lots more to come, so stay tuned.

Because of the work of some truly talented developers here — most notably John McGrath, who developed the Campaign Finance API, and Justin Sheckler, who wrote the API framework — adding new features and datasets is falling-down simple. So please give us your feedback.

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Congrats, Derek (et al).

Does the API report the FEC values verbatim or are you doing any cleaning-up of the data like the Center for Responsive Politics does? (The data doesn’t come from CRP, I guess, right?)

Hi Josh,

Thanks very much. We’re using the FEC’s electronic campaign filings and have found that our figures track the FEC’s official numbers pretty closely. We’re not doing any standardization work like CRP does, just the aggregate figures for state and zip code. So a donor search using the API would yield information about contributors just as they were filed by the campaigns.

can I directly pulgin your API feed to my Facebook account? I dont want to do any programming to make it work in facebook.

I’m glad to see this API released, and want to try it out.

But — I’m getting “Page name does not exist” when I try to sign up for a developer key at “//developer.nytimes.com/docs/apps/register” (the link from the API docs).

Congratulations! The NY Times API may revolutionize publishing. It makes your archived stories and data more valuable as “citizen journalists” extend the NYT brand, crunch numbers and analyze data.

Anyone questioning the value of the API should be directed to the FEC site, where downloading docs is a laborious, manual process.

Congrats! Any thoughts on if / when the NYT will allow commercial use of the API?

Cool approach. Will there be a public list of services that use the API?

Wow — THIS is progress! I read this column with open-mouth amazement.

What a stunningly great idea.

Excellent work, all!