How we count
every dollar.
Every number on this site traces back to a specific FEC filing from Leading the Future. Nothing is estimated, projected, or inferred. This page is the full recipe — sources, scope, how totals are built, and what we deliberately don’t count.
Independent expenditures, filed with the FEC.
The only dollars we track are independent expenditures — money a super PAC spends on ads, mail, or digital that expressly support or oppose a named federal candidate. Super PACs file these with the Federal Election Commission on Form 24 (the 24- and 48-hour notices required near an election) and roll them into periodic F3X reports.
For each filing we capture the committee, the candidate, the amount, the disbursement date, the stated purpose, and the direction (support vs. oppose) — the committee’s own declaration on the form. If the FEC has it, we carry it.
Leading the Future, in our focus races.
Tracked committees.We surface spending by committees we’ve flagged as part of the Leading the Future umbrella — the a16z-tied super PAC and its aligned arms. An editor marks a committee as tracked only after confirming its FEC registration and funding trail. Committees that may look adjacent but aren’t confirmed don’t appear in public totals.
Focus races.We list the 2026 federal races we’re watching most closely for AI-industry activity. If a tracked committee files expenditures outside a focus race, the data is still ingested — it just doesn’t roll up onto the public site until that race is added.
Backed vs. targeted — not our call.
The filing itself marks the expenditure as supporting the named candidate. We sum these into the “spent to elect” total shown on each candidate and race page.
The filing marks the expenditure as opposing the named candidate. We sum these into the “spent to defeat” total. The candidate being targeted is the subject of the money — not the beneficiary.
Because the super PAC chooses the label, not us, the direction on this site is a fact about what the committee told the FEC — not an editorial interpretation.
How the totals are built.
- Candidate total.Sum of tracked-committee expenditures naming that candidate, bucketed into “spent to elect” and “spent to defeat.”
- Race total. Sum of every tracked dollar spent on any candidate in that race, shown per-candidate so the two sides of a primary are visible side by side.
- Site totals.“Spent to elect” and “spent to defeat” across every tracked filing in every focus race. Candidate counts (“backed”, “targeted”) use whichever direction has a larger total per candidate, so one person isn’t double-counted on both sides of a ledger.
- Dollars, not ad impressions. The amounts shown are what the committee paid vendors — not estimated reach, not rate-card value.
Pulled daily.
Our sync pulls fresh FEC filings every day. Because Form 24 notices are due within 24 or 48 hours of a spend, the window between an ad hitting the air and appearing on this site is typically under three days — sometimes same-day if the committee files early.
Editorial overrides, logged.
Raw FEC data has typos, duplicates, and misfiled committee names. When an editor corrects a value, the correction is recorded as an override tied to a specific field on a specific entity, with a note explaining why.
Every override stores a hash of the upstream value it was based on. If the FEC data changes underneath, the override is flagged stale and reviewed — the override still wins on the public site until an editor signs off, so a sudden upstream change can’t silently undo a verified fix.
On purpose.
- Direct contributions to campaigns. Super PAC independent expenditures never touch a candidate’s campaign account. That money is a separate universe with separate FEC forms; we don’t blend the two on this site.
- Pre-filing or off-FEC spend.Ad buys reserved but not yet disbursed, and spending by 501(c)(4)s that isn’t reported to the FEC, don’t show up here. We only count money the committee has told the government it paid.
- Estimated or projected totals.No forecasts, no “on pace to spend X” projections. Only reported disbursements.
- Non-tracked committees.Other super PACs active in our focus races exist; this site isn’t tracking them. We’re narrow on purpose: Big AI money, end to end.
Questions or corrections?
Every total on this site has a paper trail. If you think a number is wrong, or you’ve spotted a filing we’re missing, we want to know — more on the project and who runs it on the about page.