Methodology

Political finance and lobbying records

Committee filings, company-reported political activity and lobbying disclosures are separate categories, and none of them establishes causation.

Four categories, four different filings

Each category has its own filer, definition, and reporting period. They are published separately and never summed.

Political committee filings: Committee-reported receipts and disbursements as filed with the FEC, on the filing's own period.
Company-reported political activity: A company's own disclosure of political spending, on the company's chosen scope and period.
In-house lobbying expense: What a registrant reports spending on its own lobbying. An expense figure reported by the client.
Outside-firm lobbying income: What a lobbying firm reports receiving. A different accounting object from in-house expense, and never combined with it into a lobbying total.

The published boundary

Political-committee, company political-activity, company-reported lobbying and filing-level LD-2 figures are separate categories. In-house reported lobbying expense and outside-firm reported lobbying income are different accounting objects and are never combined into a lobbying total. They are never added to each other, and never added to federal award, obligation or outlay totals. A null money value means the cited source supplies no figure; it does not mean zero.

What a contribution does not establish

A contribution or lobbying record establishes that a filing exists on a date, for an amount, by a named filer. It does not by itself establish influence, causation, or a quid pro quo.
A contribution followed by a contract action is published as a sequence with both dates. Sequence is not causation.
A lobbying registration on an issue does not establish that the issue was decided because of the lobbying, or that any named official acted on it.
Where a committee's filings and a federal award dataset disagree, both are published with their sources and the conflict is stated rather than resolved by preference.
Recipient-level transactions are withheld where primary transaction and identity review has not been completed, and what is withheld is stated on the ledger.

Entity identity in political records

Filer names, company names, and award recipient names are matched only on a corroborating identifier. A shared or similar name is treated as a question about identity, not as a match.

A subsidiary, an affiliate, and a parent are distinct filers. Their filings are not merged into a corporate total unless a cited source itself reports one.

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Where these rules are visible

What is published, and what is withheld pending primary transaction and identity review, is stated on the Follow the Money ledger.

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Rest of the method

This page is one part of the published method. The reader guide summarises all of it, and corrections are recorded on the affected record with the date applied.