Out-of-State Political Committee Contributions in Washington State

Washington State's Public Disclosure Commission provides a 17-year record of contributions to out-of-state political committees, starting in 2008. The dataset is a best-effort compilation of reportable contributions from committees meeting C5 filing requirements, with data format changes noted for reports submitted before August 2024. It includes detailed donor, committee, and employer information for transparency and verification against original reports.

Use Cases

• Tracking donor influence by analyzing contribution_date, amount, and employer across election_year.
• Mapping committee activity using committee_state, committee_city, and committee_address.
• Aggregating total contributions per committee or donor using aggregate_total, committee_id, and name.
• Verifying report filings by linking to original documents via url and report_id.
• Analyzing donor residency patterns using the resident column and contributor state.

Strengths

• Covers a long temporal range of 17 years, from 2008 to at least 2025.
• Contains a detailed schema with over 25 columns for donor, committee, and employer information.
• Is published by an authoritative government body, the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC).
• Available on multiple platforms (Socrata, Data.gov), indicating established public access.

Limitations

• Explicitly noted to potentially contain incomplete or incorrect information as a best-effort compilation.
• Data format is inconsistent for records submitted prior to August 2024.
• Key metadata like row count, file size, and exact license are unavailable across all sources.

Provenance

Source

Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC)

Collection Method

Collected from mandatory C5 Out-of-State Political Committee Campaign Finance Reports filed with the PDC.

Time Range

2008 to present (covering at least 17 years)

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-05-12 according to the most recent platform entry.

Geography

Primarily Washington State, with contributors and committees potentially from other U.S. states.