Methodology, Entity Resolution & Statutory Guardrails
1. Primary Public Data Sources & Statutory Guardrails
| Source Agency / Dataset | Forms & Bulk Files Ingested | Coverage Window | Statutory Guardrail & Deduplication Rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nebraska Accountability & Disclosure Commission (NADC) | Forms A-1, B-1AB/C/D, B-2A/B, B-4A/B1/B3, B-5, B-7, B-9, and Lobbyist/Principal (`lforma/b/c`) | 1999–2026 (41,603 rcpts, 27,054 exps in y2026) | Neb. Rev. Stat. § 49-14,132: Non-commercial public-interest research; individual contributor names suppressed into “Individuals (aggregate)”. |
| Federal Election Commission (FEC) | Committee master (`cm`), candidate linkage (`ccl`), `webl`, `webk`, `oth`/`pas2`, Schedule E IEs, ActBlue (`C00401224`) | 2016–Present cycles | 52 U.S.C. § 30111(a)(4): Sale or commercial use of contributor data prohibited; ActBlue conduit earmarks deduplicated and ZIP3 cells < 5 donors suppressed. |
| IRS Exempt Organizations BMF & Form 990 XML | 56+ state/regional IRS BMF extracts (1.9M+ EINs) + electronic Form 990 Schedule I & Schedule C XML filings | TY 2016–2024 + current BMF | 990 Schedule I grants are labeled final use undisclosed and never conflated with earmarked NADC/FEC campaign contributions. |
| USAspending.gov Federal Assistance API | Federal grant and cooperative agreement awards (assistance types 02–05) to Nebraska recipients | FY 2015–Present | 31 U.S.C. § 1352 (Byrd Amendment): Federal grants cannot be used for lobbying or campaign intervention; shown as distinct public stream. |
Network funding badges (DSA)
A tiny DSA logo icon appears next to a candidate only when NADC or FEC filings in Plains Ledger data show money from a committee registered as part of the Democratic Socialists of America (the national DSA PAC, its national IE filer, or a chapter committee, each listed by FEC/NADC ID in data/affiliation_badges.json) to that candidate. Counted: direct contributions, in-kind contributions, and independent expenditures supporting the candidate. Spending that opposes a candidate never creates a badge. Any documented amount above $0 qualifies, and each badge links to the filing behind it.
Only organizations are counted, never individual donors. Endorsements, voter guides, rhetoric, social media, and inference are not used. A committee whose name resembles a network but whose ID is not on the verified list is shown as a flagged name-only match in the candidate’s Affiliation details and does not get a badge. Party committees and conduits (ActBlue, WinRed, Anedot) are excluded. As of this update, no Nebraska candidate meets the criteria: no DSA committee appears in NADC filings, and FEC filings show no DSA contributions or supporting expenditures for Nebraska candidates. The same criteria and threshold would apply unchanged to any network added later.
The DSA logo identifies the organization named in public filings. Plains Ledger is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by DSA. A badge indicates a documented funding tie only.
Badges, tooltips, and Affiliation details are free. Filtering and sorting by network, CSV export of affiliated candidates, and alerts when a candidate newly qualifies are planned Pro features.
Local Funds & Transfer Netting
Local candidates, local ballot committees and county party committees that raise or spend over $5,000 register with NADC (Neb. Rev. Stat. 49-1445), so Local Funds uses the same NADC Contribution/Loan and Expenditure Extracts as the rest of the site (etl/local_funds.py, rebuilt each refresh).
- Local ballot committees: ballot question committees not tied to a statewide measure. NADC registration pages list no ballot question for them, so place, measure and side (support/oppose) are inferred from the committee name and flagged; committees whose name names no place are listed as "Jurisdiction not named in filings."
- Party committees: grouped by the county or legislative district in the filed name; the party (Republican, Democratic, Libertarian) and its color are shown only when the filed name states it.
- Other state & local PACs: PACs with activity in the period that appear in no other graph; those under $1,000 in both receipts and spending are collapsed into one row.
- Transfer netting: a section total subtracts receipts whose filed source is another committee in the same section (for example, a state party giving to a county party), so the same dollars are counted once. Committee-level "raised" figures stay gross as filed. The same rule applies to every party and side.
- Individuals are never named; they are combined into "Individuals (aggregated)." Unpaid pledges are excluded.
Polling Tracker
The Polling Tracker lists payments for polling, surveys, focus groups and message testing filed with the NADC (state and local committees, 2015 to date) and the FEC (operating expenditures from the full national bulk file, limited to committees registered in Nebraska or tied to Nebraska candidates, plus independent expenditures, including 24/48-hour reports, in Nebraska races). National party committees and PACs outside Nebraska are included only when the filed purpose names Nebraska or a Nebraska candidate; their other polling is listed as not attributable and not counted. The same tests apply to every committee and party.
Confidence. High: the filed purpose says poll, polling, survey, focus group, message testing or tracking (poll workers, polling places, land surveys and opposition research are excluded). Medium: the payee is a known polling firm (or has poll/survey in its name) and the purpose is not another service such as mail, media, phones or canvassing; these are flagged as name-only matches. Only high and medium rows are counted in totals and shown in the Daily movement feed. A known polling firm paid for another service is listed but not counted. Rows matched only on the word “research” are labeled “keyword match – not confirmed polling” and never counted. Entries can be manually confirmed or rejected in a reviewed list.
Counting once. Memo entries, exact duplicates and the recipient's copy of an in-kind contribution are not counted. Money paid to another filing committee for polling is counted once, at that committee's payment to the vendor. Vendor names are normalized using a list of known aliases. Payments to individuals are not named.
Public polls. Released polls are taken from public poll tables that link to each release. Sponsor status is shown as disclosed, internal campaign poll or not disclosed. A payment is linked to a poll only when a filing documents a payment from the named sponsor to the named pollster. Party is shown only where filed. Data refresh: NADC and FEC independent expenditures hourly; FEC operating expenditure bulk file daily (FEC rebuilds it about weekly).
Sector Views (Labor Unions, Business & Trade, Agriculture, Professional & Medical)
Sector views group organizations by interest-group sector, from NADC Contribution/Loan Extracts (2015 to date), FEC committee-to-committee receipts of Nebraska federal committees, and FEC independent expenditures in Nebraska races (etl/sectors.py, rebuilt every refresh, so new organizations are picked up automatically). Every sector uses the same tests.
- Classification: an organization is placed in a sector when the FEC committee master lists the matching organization type (L = labor organization; T = trade association), or when its filed name matches the sector's published name patterns (for labor: union, local numbers, AFL-CIO, IBEW, SEIU, AFSCME, Teamsters, education associations, fire fighters, police unions, building trades and similar). Name-only matches are flagged ⚑. A reviewed correction list removes false matches (for example a credit union, a soccer club or a worker center) and records documented assignments.
- What counts: cash, in-kind, loans and pledge payments as filed; unpaid pledges are not counted. FEC memo entries are excluded.
- Transfers netted: gifts from one organization in a sector to another in the same sector are shown separately and not added to the sector total, so the same dollars are counted once.
- Independent expenditures: only spending reported as supporting a Nebraska candidate is shown.
- Conduits: ActBlue, WinRed and Anedot forward individual gifts and are never counted as sector money. Gifts from union members or employees as individuals are individual money, not sector money. Individuals are never named.
- Umbrella ties (for example a local's national union or the AFL-CIO) are shown only when a filing lists the connected organization.
Top 25 Outside Influence & Pass-Through
Top 25 ranks non-candidate organizations by money put into Nebraska politics, from NADC Contribution/Loan and Expenditure Extracts and FEC bulk files (etl/top25.py, rebuilt each refresh). The same tests apply to every party, side and organization type.
- Who counts: any contributor or spender that is not an individual, a candidate, or a candidate committee: PACs, party committees, super PACs, unions, trade and issue groups, ballot committees, businesses and nonprofits. ActBlue, WinRed and Anedot are excluded because they forward individual gifts.
- What counts: contributions to Nebraska committees as filed (cash, in-kind, earmarked, miscellaneous receipts, loans and pledge payments; unpaid pledges are not counted), FEC committee transfers to Nebraska committees, independent / third-party expenditures in Nebraska races, and ballot committee campaign spending to non-committee payees.
- Level comes from the recipient: FEC = federal, NADC ballot question committee = ballot, a local candidate or local committee = local, otherwise state.
- Origin comes from the state on each filing: in-state when at least half of state-tagged dollars list a Nebraska address (NADC) or the FEC committee address is Nebraska; "unknown" when no state is filed.
- Direct view: what an organization itself gave to candidates and committees outside the ranked set, or spent on independent expenditures or ballot campaigns. Money it gave to another ranked organization is counted at that organization, so each dollar is counted once.
- Pass-through view: an organization's gross Nebraska money, minus the share of it funded by other ranked organizations. That share is their documented gifts (NADC itemized receipts or FEC itemized transfers) divided by the intermediary's total filed receipts. The upstream organization is credited for its gifts to intermediaries; the intermediary keeps the rest. Chain hops (up to three) are listed under each row with the amount, share and filing link.
- Documented hops only: a hop counts only when a filing names the giver and the recipient. IRS 990 grants (Schedule I / 990-PF) into a ranked organization are listed but not counted: they are national grants for a tax year and are not earmarked for Nebraska campaigns. A 990 hop matched only by name is labeled "name-only match / not counted." A contributor matched to a filer by name alone is flagged ⚑. Organizations with similar names are never merged without a filing ID that links them.
- Party color appears only when an FEC committee lists a party affiliation or a filed party committee name states the party.
- Individuals are never named.
Candidate Stances
The Stances section on Candidate Comparison and on candidate profiles covers 2026 general-election candidates. It is built by etl/stances.py into data/stances.json and rebuilt each refresh. The columns follow the head-to-head pair picked on the page, plus the other general-election candidates in the first candidate's race.
- Same issue list for everyone: 12 state issues and 13 national issues. Federal candidates show national issues and legislative/statewide candidates show state issues. The other group appears only when a sourced item exists for it.
- Sources: (1) the Nebraska Examiner 2026 voter-guide questionnaire, which asks the same questions of every candidate in a race. Answers are quoted verbatim (first sentences) and assigned to an issue only when the question topic directly matches it. Non-responses are skipped. (2) Hand-researched items from campaign websites and news interviews, written as neutral paraphrases. Each item lists its source type, date and link.
- Never inferred: positions are not inferred from party, donors, funding or endorsements, and no grades or labels are assigned. When a stated position and a recorded vote differ, both are shown as separate items.
- Blank cells: “No position found in sources checked” means the listed sources were checked and did not address the issue. It does not mean the candidate has no position. “Not yet researched” means no source has been checked for that candidate yet.
- Not yet included: voting records. The roll-call history of incumbents is not yet attached.
Legislature party colors
The Nebraska Legislature is officially nonpartisan: party never appears on the ballot. Candidate boxes, profiles, head-to-head columns and the Stances columns color a Legislature candidate red (Republican) or blue (Democratic) only when a public source documents that affiliation. Otherwise the box stays green, the color for nonpartisan offices. Board of Education, NU Regents and other nonpartisan offices are always green.
- Sources used, the same for every candidate: the Nebraska Democratic Party roster of state senators (each senator listed as R- or D-), the Ballotpedia Nebraska State Senate officeholder table, the Nebraska Republican Party 2026 candidate list and the Nebraska Democratic Party 2026 candidate list.
- Never inferred from donors, funding, PAC support or interest-group endorsements.
- Matching: same legislative district and surname. If two sources disagree, the candidate is shown as not documented.
- Label: each Legislature candidate shows a small tag such as "Party: R (state party candidate list)" with a source link, or "Party affiliation not documented". Candidates a source lists as independent or nonpartisan stay green.
- Built by
etl/legislature_party.pyintodata/legislature_party.json(party, source, link and access date for each candidate), rebuilt each refresh.
Money Trail Flow charts
Each entity page draws one flow chart with the same rules for every committee, party and side. The left column shows money the committee received as filed: ActBlue and WinRed conduit totals, each split into Nebraska and out-of-state donors with no individual names; committee and party contributions; and aggregate individual and self-funding totals. Conduit dollars are subtracted from the individual total so they are not counted twice, and transfers between committees are netted. The right column shows filed spending: FEC purpose categories (Schedule B) for federal committees, itemized payees plus the unitemized remainder for state committees, and transfers out. Independent spending for or against a candidate is drawn as its own flow, labeled “not through the campaign,” and is never added to the campaign’s receipts. Independent spending is linked to candidates by name and marked ⚑. Small flows are grouped into expandable clusters. The chart draws only independent spending that supports the candidate, the same way for every candidate; spending against a candidate is not drawn in the flow but is listed in the independent-spending table on the page and on the /ie page, which shows both for and against.
Umbrella and coalition ties
Some organizations work under an umbrella, table, coalition, association or national network. We show these ties only when they are documented: the umbrella’s own published member or affiliate list (linked, with the date checked), IRS 990 Schedule I or fiscal-sponsor records, or NADC/FEC filings. Nothing is inferred. Members are linked to site profiles by name, and those links are marked ⚑. The same rule applies to every umbrella, whatever its views. Being listed as a member is an affiliation, not a transfer of money, and adds nothing to any dollar total.
Payments to Vendors
Sources: FEC bulk operating expenditures (Schedule B lines 17/21b, file oppexp, payees with a Nebraska address) and NADC Expenditure Extracts (business payees). Rebuilt on every hourly/nightly refresh (etl/vendor_payments.py); every figure links to the FEC filing image or the NADC committee record (with expenditure ID).
- Excluded: payments to committees, parties or candidates (transfers, shown in Money Map); contributions, in-kind and refund/return lines; FEC memo items; FEC reports superseded by an amendment (only the latest file number per committee and report is kept); duplicate NADC expenditure IDs (latest row kept).
- Individuals: payees who are individuals (staff, reimbursements, the candidate) are combined into one "Individuals (aggregated)" line; no names are shown. ZIP codes are not shown.
- Small items: vendors paid under $1,000 in a period are counted in totals but not listed.
- Name merging: filings are merged into one vendor only when names are identical after uppercasing and removing punctuation and legal suffixes (LLC, Inc., Co., Corp., Ltd., LLP, The). Other similar names (one name is the other plus extra words) are listed separately and flagged "possible same vendor (name match only)".
- Purpose categories use the filing's own purpose text, matched in this order to the first keyword group: Media/TV/radio (TV, radio, media, ad buy, placement); Digital/online (digital, online, web, email, social, text, SMS, software, data); Mail/print (mail, print, postage, signs, literature); Consulting/strategy (consult, strategy, management, communications); Polling/research; Fundraising/processing fees; Payroll/staff; Travel/events; Legal/compliance; Office/rent/admin; otherwise Other/not stated.
- Relationships: a vendor's tie to a candidate (e.g. candidate-owned firm) is shown only if a filing states it. Payments to vendors are lawful disclosures and are not presented as wrongdoing. The same rules apply to every candidate, party and committee.
2. Deterministic Multi-Stage Entity Classifier & Legacy/Modern ID Bridge
Every committee, supplemental filer, contributor, expenditure payee, grant recipient, ballot measure funder, and network node across all 18 reporting periods is resolved through a deterministic multi-stage classifier (etl/classify.py + data/nadc_master_lookup.json):
- Exact EIN / FEC Committee ID / NADC Org ID Lookup: Matches against the IRS EO BMF (1.9M EINs), FEC Committee Master, and NADC Master Lookup (54,642 canonical entries bridging legacy NADC IDs like
99PAC00020, Form B-4/B-1 filing IDs likenadc-8822, and modern NADC Org IDs likenadc-7765). - NADC Filer & Contributor Type Resolution: Distinguishes Candidate committees (
C), Ballot question committees (B), Party committees (P), Separate segregated PACs, Independent PACs (I), Labor unions (501(c)(5)), Trade/business associations (501(c)(6)), Social-welfare advocacy orgs (501(c)(4)), Charitable nonprofits (501(c)(3)), Government agencies/universities, For-profit businesses, and Individual Supplemental Filers (Form B-7 / B-6). - Expenditure Payee & Purpose Classification: Classifies NADC expenditure payees and ballot/party vendors across advertising/media buyers, political strategy & polling firms, canvass/field operations, legal/compliance firms, and administrative vendors.
3. Netting Inter-Committee Transfers
NADC: A receipt is treated as an inter-committee transfer when its source type is a committee and its name matches another NADC filer; net receipts = receipts − transfers in.
FEC: net receipts = total receipts − transfers from affiliated/authorized committees (and, for PACs, contributions from other committees). Committee-to-committee edges use the giving committee's report only (memo entries and independent expenditures excluded) so each dollar appears once.
What counts as raised (NADC, every committee alike): monetary, in-kind, earmarked, miscellaneous receipts, loans and pledge payments received, as the committee itself filed them. Unpaid pledges are not counted (counting a pledge and its payment would double-count). NADC extracts carry the current amended version of each row. A candidate's raised total uses only that committee's own reports; other filers' reports of giving to it are used only when the committee filed no receipts.
4. Reporting Periods & Single-Year vs. Cycle Scope
The global period selector offers two-year election cycles (`2016`–`2026`) and single calendar years (`y2015`–`y2026`), generated automatically from the current date each nightly refresh — off-years included. NADC 2022+ data comes from that reporting year's bulk extract; NADC 2015–2020 legacy data, FEC committee-to-committee transfers, and ActBlue earmarks are split by transaction date. Because the FEC publishes committee summary totals (`webl`/`webk`) per two-year cycle only, single-year views clearly label cycle-level FEC summary figures.
Data built 2026-10-27 14:31 CT · Period 2026 (partial, as of 2026-10-27) counts: {"nadc_receipt_rows":41603,"nadc_expenditure_rows":27054,"fec_ne_committees_with_totals":91,"fec_transfer_rows":1882,"fec_actblue_earmark_rows":23754,"usaspending_raw_rows":100,"usaspending_recipients":95,"propublica_ein_links":13,"propublica_c4_sample":100,"propublica_c6_sample":100,"entities":2122,"flow_edges":3560}