The Last Mile of
Political Money
We know where campaign money comes from. But what does it actually buy at the street level? This is an attempt to find out.
FEC disbursement data tells you not just that a super PAC spent millions in Philadelphia — it tells you the vendor, the vendor's address, and the expenditure type.
That means you can map the actual physical footprint of a political campaign in a city: which production studios cut the ads, which direct mail houses printed the flyers, which local TV stations cashed the checks, which data firms in which office parks modeled the voter files.
Follow the money. All the way down.
In the 2024 election cycle, political committees reported $21.6B in spending to the Federal Election Commission.
We traced every dollar to the vendor that received it — and mapped where those vendors actually sit.
The national picture
Political spending is not evenly distributed. Some states attract enormous sums while others are virtually ignored. The map shows total disbursements by state — a combination of Democratic and Republican spending.
Hover over any state to see the breakdown.
Battleground concentration
Six states dominate: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia. These battlegrounds absorb a disproportionate share of the national spending total.
But this map still only tells you where money goes. It doesn't tell you who catches it.
Philadelphia: A case study
Philadelphia is one of the most intensely targeted cities in American politics. Let's see exactly where the money lands.
Street-level view
Each dot on this map is a political vendor — a firm that received money from a political committee. The size of the dot reflects how much they received. The color shows which party's committees paid them.
Blue = Democratic spending
Red = Republican spending
The clustering is not random
Notice how the dots cluster tightly. A significant share of all political spending in this city flows to vendors within a few blocks of each other.
These are the media buyers, direct mail houses, consulting firms, and data analytics operations that form the backbone of modern campaigns.
Explore the vendors
Click any dot on the map to see who they are, how much they received, and which party's money they handle. Use the filters in the legend to isolate Democratic or Republican vendors.
Market concentration
The political vendor ecosystem is remarkably concentrated. The top 20 firms capture an outsized share of all spending. Each block in this treemap is sized by total dollars received.
A handful of firms — many of them based in Washington, D.C. — quietly process enormous volumes of campaign spending.
The repeat players
The same vendors appear cycle after cycle. This timeline shows spending for the top recurring vendors across the last five election cycles. Larger circles mean more money.
The political-industrial complex is not just large — it's stable. The same firms profit from every election, regardless of which party wins.
Explore it yourself
Below this story is a full interactive explorer. Search for any vendor, filter by party or state, jump to any city, and click into individual vendor profiles.
Explore the Data
Search, filter, and click into the vendor ecosystem behind American elections.