tidyusafec

The tidyusafec package aims to make campaign finance data more accessible in R and friendly with tidy workflows. It works by accessing data through the OpenFEC API, which requires an API key to run.

Installation

Though I'm developing out in the open, this is very much pre-alpha release status. Installation is through the devtools package

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("stephenholzman/tidyusafec")

Examples

library(tidyverse)
library(tidyusafec)

#install api key
save_datagov_apikey("api-key-string")

df <- search_candidates(state = "VA", district = "05", office = "H", election_year = 2018, candidate_status = "C") %>%
  get_candidate_totals()

df %>% filter(type_of_funds %in% tidyusafec_filters$candidate_totals$type_of_funds$top_level, cycle == "2018") %>%
  separate(name, c('last_name', 'first_name'), sep = ', ', extra = "drop", fill = "right") %>%
  arrange(-desc(amount)) %>%
  ggplot() +
  geom_bar(aes(x = forcats::as_factor(last_name), y = amount), stat = "identity") +
  facet_wrap(~type_of_funds) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = scales::dollar) +
  coord_flip() +
  theme_bw()

library(tidyverse)
library(tidyusafec)
wv_senate_search <- search_candidates(state = "WV", office = "S", election_year = "2018") %>%
  get_candidate_totals()

wv_senate_search %>% filter(type_of_funds %in% tidyusafec_filters$candidate_totals$type_of_funds$receipts_smallest_components, cycle == "2018", amount > 0) %>%
  separate(name, c('last_name', 'first_name'), sep = ', ', extra = "drop", fill = "right") %>%
  mutate(type_of_funds = str_replace_all(type_of_funds,"_"," ") %>% str_to_title()) %>%
  arrange(-desc(amount)) %>%
  ggplot() +
  geom_bar(aes(x = forcats::as_factor(last_name), y = amount, fill = party), stat = "identity") +
  geom_label(aes(x = forcats::as_factor(last_name), y = amount, label = scales::dollar(amount)), hjust = -0.1, label.size = 0, label.padding = unit(0.2,"line"), size = 3) +
  facet_wrap(~factor(type_of_funds,levels = str_replace_all(tidyusafec_filters$candidate_totals$type_of_funds$receipts_smallest_components,"_"," ") %>% str_to_title), labeller = label_wrap_gen()) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = paste0("$",seq(0,6),"M"), breaks = seq(0,6000000,by=1000000), limits = c(0,6000000)) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = c("DEM" = "#2c4d82", "REP" = "#8e1b1b", "IND" = "#a3a3a3", "GRE" = "#1c561d", "LIB" = "#afac3d", "CON" = "#AEAEAE")) +
  coord_flip(clip = "off") + 
  theme(
    panel.background = element_blank(),
    panel.grid.major.x = element_line(color = "#7c7c7c",size = .4),
    panel.grid.major.y = element_blank(),
    panel.spacing = unit(.8,"cm"),
    strip.text = element_text(size = 12, face = "bold"),
    strip.background = element_blank(),
    axis.ticks = element_blank(),
    plot.title = element_text(size = 26),
    plot.subtitle = element_text(size = 18),
    axis.text = element_text(size = 8)
  )