Our research platform
Influence, no longer invisible.
Professional baseball was once dominated by conventional wisdom and anecdotal evidence when it came to roster construction decisions. Today, political spending and influence face the same challenges. Hidden Levers aims to lead the creation of advanced analytic tools that help journalists, researchers, and citizens better navigate signal from noise in political finance.
Search and resolve.
Reliable analysis depends on clean data. As the old saying about statistics goes: garbage in, garbage out. Hidden Levers utilizes custom AI models to normalize data and merge records, creating the most accurate single source for political spending in American history.
Map networks.
Spreadsheets can't fully capture the nuance and sophistication of social networks. Hidden Levers is designed at its foundation to study the complex relationships between candidates, elected officials, donors, government, private industry, and more.
Dig deeper.
Custom dashboards. AI interfaces. Percentile benchmarks. Integrations. Hidden Levers aims to exist at the leading edge of technological progress in the AI era.
Our methodology.
Precision over recall: a missed connection is recoverable, but a false one corrupts the record. Every automated match is governed by conservative thresholds, benchmarked before release, and correctable after it.
Who it's for.
Journalists on deadline. Academics building datasets. Political professionals analyzing a primary or general election. Citizens who have questions.
Access.
Every data point is available for free to the public. Advanced analytics and tools are offered via subscription to offset maintenance costs and support Hume's mission.
Data and permitted use.
Built on public data published by the Federal Election Commission and combined with other publicly available sources. Federal law restricts the use of individual contributor information: it may not be sold, used for commercial purposes, or used to solicit contributions. By using the platform, you agree to these restrictions. †