The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

Independent research. Not affiliated with any government, agency, or company.

Exhibit 918

Dataset: FEC independent expenditures 2012-2024 by committee type and benefiting party

Exhibit 918 ยท Dataset

Dataset: FEC independent expenditures 2012-2024 by committee type and benefiting party

Source: independent_expenditure_YYYY.csv and cmYY.zip (committee master) from fec.gov bulk downloads. Dedupe by spe_id+tran_id keeping highest file_num; exclude spe_ids not in the committee master and rows of $100M or more (hoax filings: Committee of 300, Spirit of Reforming America, others). Possible residual double counting about 1-3 percent. Saved copy and sha256 in research/politics/money-without-names.fec-run.json.

Source
Lacuna derivation from FEC bulk files
Date
run 10 November 2026
Grade
Primary record
Document
https://www.fec.gov/data/browse-data/?tab=bulk-data
Accessed
2026-11-10
Cited by
Findings citing this exhibit
Note
Saved summary: research/politics/money-without-names.fec-run.json (sha256 2841ae3b6feed3453281622a96712ff4e2236e9c0fdd55870d818a0ba9986d46). The url is the FEC bulk-data landing page, not a document.

Cited by

Finding POL-5.4
Primary record Independent expenditures reported to the FEC (support and oppose, derived from FEC bulk files) were $973 million in 2012, $683 million in 2014, $1,397 million in 2016, $1,041 million in 2018, $2,733 million in 2020, $1,750 million in 2022 and $4,029 million in 2024. Non-committee filers, the category in which an organization reports spending in its own name, reported $116 million (11.9 percent of the total) in 2012 and $67 million (1.7 percent) in 2024.