Gathering FEC filing summaries for competitive 2020 races at the quarterly deadlines.
Created by George LeVines ([email protected])
Save some time reporting on quarterly summaries for competitive races.
- You need fec-loader.
- FEC loader needs PostgresQL.
- In postgres you need the standard localhost database called
postgres
with userpostgres
and no password. - Do python stuff by running
pipenv install
andpipenv shell
from the project root after cloning.
- Political reporters Simone Pathé and Bridget Bowman gathered list of candidate committee IDs.
- Ilana Marcus helped with bash script.
- NewsNerds #campfin helped with various FEC filing questions.
- And Chris Zubak-Skees built this miracle thing.
After cloning the git repo:
- From the command line in the root director.
- Run
pipenv install
thenpipenv shell
thenjupyter-lab
, which should open an iPython Notebook in your browser.
- Run
- Open
analysis/fec_files.ipynb
. - Follow the instructions there, running each cell as you go.
- Find your output in
data/processed
.
NOTE
While it's possible to download bulk(ish) raw data from https://www.fec.gov/data/filings/?data_type=efiling often the number of listed items is not the number of rows that will come out in your CSV (especially true on a filing deadline day). One way around this seems to be to fill in some date parameters that are outside the bounds of the dates you are interested in.