April 6, 2006: The Wisconsin Campaign Finance Project announces a collaboration with the Institute on Money in State Politics, the preeminent source of state election campaign finance data.  In order to encourage members of the academic community to use its data for empirical research,  the Institute has agreed to make its summary files available to college and university faculty and students for less than 10% of the normal cost. 

The IMSP data include summary campaign finance information for candidates for statewide and state legislative offices, as well as a breakdown of campaign contributions by source.  This file, from the 2004 Alaska elections, is an example of what is available.  The full data set of over 80,000 records includes comprehensive fundraising data from 1998-2004, and has information for some states as far back as 1990.   

The Institute will provide this dataset  to the academic community for $250, a fraction of what it would normally charge. 

For more information, contact Ken Mayer, the Director of the Wisconsin Campaign Finance Project (kmayer@polisci.wisc.edu), or Edwin Bender, Executive Director of the Institute on Money in State Politics (edwinb@statemoney.org).

April 5, 2006:  Data on Los Angeles city elections from 1993-2005  added
 Compiled by Brian Adams, Assistant Professor of Political Science, San Diego State University