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  1. Home
  2. ›The Race
  3. ›How it works

The Race

How The Race works

The Race covers federal elections for President, Senate, and House: archive finance and popular-vote results, plus a map that can show live civicAPI tallies or historical winners. State and local races stay off this shelf.

Cycles and offices

Federal campaigns are organized by election cycle. Presidency, Senate, and House shelves filter the same archive by office.

Keep cycle labels honest. A 2024 finance row is not the same object as a 2026 live primary tally.

Live vs archive

Live map mode shows unofficial civicAPI tallies for browsing the current cycle on this site. Treat those numbers as election-night overlays until a certified source replaces them. For your own tools, call civicAPI directly rather than treating The Ledger as a live redistributor.

Archive mode uses historical FEC and Clerk-style results by cycle. Stage and party filters lock to general / all in archive mode because that is what the choropleth sources support.

Finance and field receipts

Candidate pages show FEC weball-style totals and top itemized donors when present. Field receipts can double-count across related committees; methodology explains those traps.

Donor pages can span multiple cycles. Read the cycle labels on each recipient row before summing.

How to read this shelf

Start on the map for geography, then open a candidate or donor for money and vote detail. Prefer certified archive sources when you publish a final figure.

Related definitions

  • Election cycle
  • FEC
  • Field receipts
  • civicAPI
  • Primary

Explore

MapSenateStart hereThe Race hub
The Race archives federal elections (President, Senate, House) from FEC bulk (weball + pas2 + cm) + FEC presidential summary tables + FEC/MEDSL election results + state primary adapters. Election cycles stay separate. Field receipts sum each candidate's reported receipts and can double-count transfers; they are not certified cycle fundraising. Popular votes attach for the general election and, when available, the party primary. Built 2026-08-07T12:56:19Z. How metrics are calculated: methodology.