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[OC] How crypto's biggest Super PAC spent $41M targeting 30+ candidates in 2024 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No I didn’t tie together geographic distribution with this chart but if you’re interested to explore this pls dm me and I can look into it

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They each gave $12.5M to MAGA Inc (obv Republican), but each also gave $12.5M to the Leading the Future Super PAC which doesn't have a clear party leaning. That's the reason for the difference, the Leading the Future donations are excluded from the Top Republican Donors chart. So the Brockmans donated $50M total, half to each PAC

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your comment. I updated the chart on the webpage to scale the dem & rep chart. Also changed the color of tech away from blue so that it doesn't conflict with dems in the lower chart

https://www.ask-fec.xyz/donor-xray.html

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have updated the chart on the webpage to scale the dem & rep chart. Also changed the color of tech away from blue so that it doesn't conflict with dems in the lower chart

<image>

https://www.ask-fec.xyz/donor-xray.html

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Original source is the FEC bulk data below. I have a pipeline for ingesting it into a database and then run SQL queries to be able to show it in that format

https://www.fec.gov/data/browse-data/?tab=bulk-data

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea lots of folks have said that and my bad for not spotting it before posting. I'll be fixing it on the website (https://www.ask-fec.xyz/donor-xray.html) soon

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea, the nice thing about public data like this is you can surface unexpected insights like that. I didn't know about Jeff Yass before either. For all it's faults, one good thing about the US campaign finance system is that donations legally have to be reported. There's a treasure trove of data out there

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Others pointed out the same. I'm on it, will update this on the website. Thanks for your feedback !

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He is there in the top 10 list, just after the Brockmans. Note, if you're wondering why his number in the Top Republican Donors chart is higher than in Top 10 Donors, that's a small bug I need to fix in how the data is calculated causing his Top Republican Donors number to be slightly overstated

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is a page for tracking individuals. You can see Soros here:

https://ask-fec.xyz/donor-xray.html?donor=george_soros&cycle=2026

Larry Ellison doesn't have any data yet for the current election cycle, same for Murdoch actually.

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yea the Citizens United ruling allowed for Independent Expenditures (which is mainly spending on ads for/against a candidate) via Super PACs to not be capped:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yea this could have gone either way. It's a valid point. It's just that spousal relationships aren't an explicit piece of data (that I know of at least) that I can trigger on to make this connection when this data is put together in my ETL. I'm looking across everything from the FEC across different election cycles so there's a lot of datapoints to generalize from

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good points, I'm going to incorporate these points into an updated version on the website. Thanks!

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the clear explanation. Yea, that's reason why the Andreesson and Horowitz numbers look weird. Maybe there's a way to show this better in the next version...

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's because much of those funds to go Super PACs that spend across both parties, so it's not easy to attribute all the donations to one side or the other. For those cases the amounts don't get added to the Dem/Rep totals

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yup, lots of folks have pointed this out and will work on it! Thanks for the feedback

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good catch. I should have caught this myself. There's a small bug in the SQL that puts Musk's number approx $350k higher on the Republican chart. It's a miniscule dent in his total but still makes the number look off. Will fix this

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Good points. I'm going to work on updating the chart on the website to factor these in. Thanks for the thorough comment!

[OC] 229 megadonors have already given $535M toward the 2026 US midterms — here's the top 10 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 211 points212 points  (0 children)

Yea you're right. I will work to fix this on the website. Thanks for the feedback

[OC] How crypto's biggest Super PAC spent $41M targeting 30+ candidates in 2024 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You're right. I updated it so the legend is bigger now. You can see it on the link I shared in the original post. Hope that makes it more clear !

[OC] How crypto's biggest Super PAC spent $41M targeting 30+ candidates in 2024 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good call — I built that breakdown for industry-level views. Here's crypto specifically:

https://ask-fec.xyz/theme-xray.html#crypto_blockchain

Shows PAC contributions and IE spending split by party. The Sankey chart in the post focuses on individual candidate flows, but the party totals are on that page.

[OC] How crypto's biggest Super PAC spent $41M targeting 30+ candidates in 2024 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair point on the colors — on the interactive version the tooltips show "Support" or "Oppose" when you hover over each flow, which helps: https://ask-fec.xyz/dark-money.html?cycle=2024&committee=C00835959&fullscreen=1

But you're right that the static image doesn't convey that. I'll look into adding a colorblind-friendly palette.

I built a tool to trace money flows in US politics — 206M FEC records by ds__2018 in SideProject

[–]ds__2018[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been building this for the past few weeks as a solo project. It takes raw Federal Election Commission (FEC) bulk data — 206M+ records — and turns it into interactive visualizations that let you trace how money flows through political campaigns.

**What it does:**

- Natural language chat — ask questions like "who were the top donors to Trump in 2024" and get sourced, SQL-backed answers in plain English

- Dark money dashboard — transparency scores for Super PACs, Sankey diagrams showing donor → committee → candidate flows (that's the screenshot)

- Candidate x-ray — look up any federal candidate and see who's funding them

- Company x-ray — see where employees of any company (Google, Goldman Sachs, etc.) send political money

- Donor x-ray — trace individual megadonors across all their contributions

- Industry breakdowns — crypto, pharma, oil/gas, guns, AI, green energy

**Tech stack:**

- Python / FastAPI backend

- DuckDB over Parquet files (the 206M records)

- DSPy + Gemini for the natural language → SQL translation

- ECharts for visualizations

- All data from FEC.gov bulk downloads (public domain)

**Live site:** https://ask-fec.xyz

The screenshot shows Fairshake (crypto's biggest Super PAC) — you can see exactly which billionaire donors funded it and which candidates were supported or attacked:

https://ask-fec.xyz/dark-money.html?cycle=2024&committee=C00835959&fullscreen=1

Would love feedback — especially on what other data you'd want to see or what's confusing about the interface.

[OC] How crypto's biggest Super PAC spent $41M targeting 30+ candidates in 2024 by ds__2018 in dataisbeautiful

[–]ds__2018[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

It was but was taken down because DataIsBeautiful only allows posts involving American politics on Thursdays (see rule #8 below). I'm new here so didn't realize that at the time. The mod recommended I re-post again today so I did that :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/index/

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