Clear, nonpartisan answers to common questions about campaign finance, federal disclosure, and how MoneyTalks.Vote presents the money in the 2026 races. For longer explainers, see our Learn guides.
Last updated: June 2026The FEC is the Federal Election Commission, an independent regulatory agency that Congress established in 1975 following the post-Watergate reforms to the Federal Election Campaign Act. Its responsibilities include administering and enforcing federal campaign finance law, overseeing the public disclosure of campaign finance information, and maintaining the database of reports that candidates and committees are required to file.
Every candidate for the United States Senate or House of Representatives must report their fundraising and spending to the Commission, which then makes that information available to the public. MoneyTalks.Vote draws its figures directly from that public record.
Federal campaign finance operates under a disclosure regime built on the principle that voters are entitled to know who is financing the candidates seeking to represent them. The Federal Election Campaign Act, strengthened by its 1974 amendments, requires campaigns to register committees and file periodic reports of their receipts and disbursements. These filings are public record by law. Transparency, rather than secrecy, is the organizing idea of the entire system.
Total raised, also called total receipts, is the full amount of money a campaign has taken in during the election cycle. It includes contributions from individual donors, money from political action committees and other committees, any funds the candidate has loaned or given to their own campaign, and other receipts. It is the broadest measure of a campaign's financial scale, though it does not by itself indicate how much money remains available to spend.
Cash on hand is the balance a campaign still holds after subtracting everything it has spent so far. It is often a more meaningful indicator of present strength than total raised, because a campaign can bring in a large sum and still hold little in reserve if it has been spending quickly. A healthy cash on hand position gives a campaign the flexibility to fund advertising, staffing, and field operations in the closing stretch of a race.
Disbursements are the funds a campaign spends. This category covers expenditures such as advertising, staff salaries, travel, polling, consulting, and other operating costs. Comparing a campaign's disbursements with its receipts shows how aggressively it is deploying its resources, which can reflect strategic choices about timing and intensity.
A PAC, or political action committee, is an organization that raises money to support or oppose candidates. Traditional PACs operate within contribution limits set by federal law and may give directly to candidates' campaigns. They provide an organized, disclosed channel through which businesses, labor organizations, and interest groups participate in elections. Our guide to PACs explains how they are formed and how they report.
A Super PAC, formally an independent expenditure-only committee, may raise and spend unlimited sums, but it cannot contribute money directly to a candidate's campaign and may not coordinate its spending with that candidate. A traditional PAC accepts strict contribution limits in exchange for the ability to give directly to campaigns. The distinction emerged from court decisions in 2010, which our guide to Super PACs and independent expenditures covers in detail.
Individual contributions come from people, while PAC contributions come from political committees. The mix between the two is frequently read as a signal of the kind of support a campaign has assembled. A high share of individual donations, particularly small-dollar donations, is often interpreted as a sign of grassroots enthusiasm, while substantial PAC funding reflects organized or institutional backing. Both are legitimate and fully disclosed sources of campaign money.
Yes. Federal law caps how much an individual may contribute to a candidate's campaign for each election, with the primary and general elections counted separately, and these limits are adjusted for inflation over time. Political action committees are also subject to limits on what they may give to candidates. Independent expenditures, which are not coordinated with a campaign, are treated differently and are not subject to those same caps. The figures on MoneyTalks.Vote reflect what campaigns report receiving within this legal framework.
We organize the covered battleground states into two tiers based on how competitive the 2026 races are expected to be. Top tier states, namely Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, are the most closely contested battlegrounds, where both parties are investing most heavily. Second tier states, namely Texas, Florida, Ohio, Minnesota, Alaska, New Hampshire, Nebraska, and Virginia, are also competitive and worth watching. These tiers describe expected closeness only; they are not predictions of any outcome and do not favor any party.
The figures are retrieved live. Each time you load a page, MoneyTalks.Vote pulls the latest available data directly from the Federal Election Commission. Campaigns file reports on a defined schedule throughout the year, typically quarterly during an election year with additional reports before primaries and the general election, so the numbers change as new filings are submitted. The coverage date shown for each candidate indicates the period through which their most recent report was filed.
A candidate may not appear, or may appear without figures, for several routine reasons. They may not yet have filed a report with the Commission, their committee may have registered too recently for data to be available, or they may not have crossed the thresholds that trigger detailed reporting. Because the platform reflects only what has been officially filed, a blank or absent figure generally means the public record does not yet contain that information, not that the platform has omitted it.
No. MoneyTalks.Vote focuses on federal United States Senate and House races in the covered battleground states. It does not track presidential campaigns, state offices such as governor or legislature, local offices, or ballot measures. This focus keeps the platform centered on the competitive congressional contests where the disclosed money tends to be most consequential.
No. The platform is strictly nonpartisan. It does not endorse candidates or parties, it does not editorialize, and it presents Democratic and Republican candidates with identical data fields and formatting. The numbers are reported exactly as filed, and their interpretation is left entirely to you.
All figures are drawn from the Federal Election Commission's public data, compiled from the reports candidates are legally required to file. This is official public record. We do not store, modify, or resell the underlying data; we retrieve the latest available figures and present them in a readable format. Anyone can verify a figure by consulting the corresponding filing at the Commission.
Campaign finance figures measure financial resources, not votes. A well-funded campaign has more capacity to advertise and organize, but fundraising is only one factor among many that shape an election, alongside candidate quality, national conditions, district composition, and turnout. MoneyTalks.Vote presents the financial dimension of a race clearly and leaves any conclusions about its significance to the reader.