Methodology

Every figure on this site comes from public campaign-finance records: the Texas Ethics Commission for money reported in Texas, and the Federal Election Commission for the donors behind out-of-state PACs. For each candidate, officeholder, and committee, we report how much of the money behind them came from outside Texas (the money they raised, plus what committees spent to elect them), and we show the work.

What “outside” means

Each itemized contribution carries the contributor's reported city and state. We classify a contribution as Texas or outside from that reported state. This is the address on the filing, not verified residency. It can be a second home, a business or wealth-office address, a recent move, the filing address of an LLC or trust, or a data-entry error, and the same person can appear from more than one state. We do not correct or guess residency, and a named contributor is a record on a public filing, not a verdict about where that person lives.

Three buckets

Every eligible dollar resolves to one of three buckets: Texas, Outside Texas, or Unresolved. The three always add up to the full amount: what the filer raised, plus, for a candidate, what committees spent to elect them. The outside share is the headline. The unresolved share sits beside it and is never pushed into either of the other two, because guessing is the thing this index exists to avoid.

One profile, one person

A profile is a person, not a single filing account. A candidate files under a campaign account and often through one or more committees, so we combine the accounts that belong to the same person, and money moved between a person's own accounts is counted once, not twice. Committees are joined to a person from the state's candidate filings and human review, never by name alone: the filer record holds committees that share a candidate's name without being theirs, including opposition committees, and a name match would misattribute that money. A committee we cannot confidently place stays on its own profile.

Money routed through PACs

Contributors to a Texas political committee report their city and state, so a committee has a resolvable mix of Texas and out-of-state money. When that committee gives to a candidate, the money is blended: a committee that raised 90 percent of its money outside Texas passes that same 90 percent through on what it donates. Give a candidate $100 from that committee and $90 counts as outside. Committees funded by other committees are traced through the whole chain, so the original sources carry through. On a profile, this is the portion labeled inherited or modeled, and it is always kept separate from the direct portion, which comes straight from the reported addresses.

Committees registered out of state or with the Federal Election Commission file their donor detail federally, not with Texas, so Texas records do not carry the states of their donors. We start by classifying money from those committees as outside, using the Ethics Commission's own out-of-state-PAC flag. When such a committee reports a federal id and we can match its FEC individual-contribution records, we split its money by where its donors actually are: the share from Texas donors counts as Texas, and the rest is spread across the outside states its donors live in, so a candidate funded through a Nevada-backed federal PAC shows Nevada, not a blank map. The join covers every federal cycle from 2000 to the present. A committee's money we cannot match, because it filed no federal id or reported no itemized donors, stays in the aggregate out-of-state bucket labeled “out-of-state PAC.”

One depth limit is worth stating. The share of a filer's money that is outside Texas is traced through the full chain of committees. The map of which states it came from is traced one step, to the donors of the committees that funded the filer directly. A committee funded by another committee is placed on the map by the intermediate committee's donors, not its deeper origins, so the states can be less precise than the percentage.

Money spent on a candidate's behalf

A committee can spend to elect a candidate without ever handing the candidate a dollar, by buying the mail, the advertising, and the text messages directly. Texas calls this a direct campaign expenditure, and it is not a contribution to the candidate, so it never appears in what the candidate raised. But it is money spent to get them elected, and where it came from is the same question this index asks of any contribution. So we count it: a committee's own outside share flows through to what it spent, exactly as it does when the committee writes the candidate a check. A candidate who raised almost entirely in state can still have most of the money spent to elect them come from outside Texas.

This is kept as its own portion on a profile, labeled spent-on-their-behalf, and it is never counted as money the candidate raised. A single expenditure often names several candidates at once (a shared mailer, a joint ad buy), and the records carry its full amount on every one of their lines, so we divide it equally among the named beneficiaries: the shares sum to what the committee actually spent, never a multiple of it. The Ethics Commission records name the candidate each expenditure benefits, and we resolve that name to a profile by office and district. Spending we can tie to a covered candidate with confidence is counted. The rest is left off the candidate's profile rather than guessed, because the same candidate is named and coded inconsistently from one filing to the next, a nickname where the roster holds a legal name or a race filed without its district, or the money benefits a candidate in a local race a statewide index does not carry. Either way the spending committee's own page still lists every candidate it backed. Only spending to support a candidate is counted here; spending against an opponent is a separate question this release does not yet answer.

The outside share is a floor

Texas does not impose one standard for how committees and candidates report. The same person is named one way on their own filing and another way on a committee's expenditure, a state seat is recorded on one report and left blank on the next, and the detail behind a contribution varies from filer to filer. When a record does not let us tie a piece of money to the right person with confidence, we leave it out rather than place it on the wrong name. Every one of those calls runs the same way: we undercount before we misattribute. So the outside share on a profile is a floor, not a ceiling. The real figure is at least what we show, and where the records are thin, higher. We would rather be low and certain than high and wrong.

Two views of the same record

A profile answers a question about one filer: trace this candidate's money through the committees that funded them, and how much is ultimately from outside Texas? It covers the filer's full record, all years. The home page's “cents of every dollar” headline counts that same lifetime record a second way, each contribution once at the point it was made, without tracing through PACs. Those two lenses on the lifetime data land within about a point of each other.

The map and the per-state pages show a narrower, timelier slice: the money reported this election cycle, sorted by the contributor's own reported state. That current-cycle view is why a state page total can differ from a filer's lifetime profile. Each page states which view, and which period, it is showing.

What unresolved means

Some money cannot be placed. Unitemized contributions are reported only as a lump sum, with no address, because the law does not require one below the itemization threshold. Money inherited from a committee whose own sources cannot be traced stays untraceable rather than being assumed. Contributions with a blank or unusable address are not guessed. All of it is counted as unresolved and kept in the total.

Counting donors

The donor figures count people, not filings. A single contributor is filed inconsistently across reports, as “First Last” on one and “Last First” on another, or from more than one city, so we group a person by a normalized name and postal code before counting. For the count we keep middle names and initials, so two different people who share a first and last name are not merged into one. The shown top-donor lists collapse name variants a little more aggressively, so the display stays readable. Donor counts cover itemized individual contributions only. Unitemized small-dollar money has no identity attached and is not counted here, which means the true number of small donors, most of them in state, is larger than what these counts show.

What the figures do not do

Amounts are gross contributions received, not money net of refunds, and in-kind contributions are included at their reported value rather than separated out. The score is the outside dollars over every dollar spent to elect the filer (what they raised plus what committees spent on their behalf), leaving unresolved money in the denominator, which is the conservative choice: removing it would raise the outside share, not lower it. None of these figures is a claim about where an individual lives or a judgment about any person named on the site.

What this does not claim

This index measures where a candidate's money comes from. It does not claim that outside money decided any election. Where a candidate who raised more from outside also won, that is a correlation, not proof, because the likely winner tends to attract money from everywhere. What the record does show is who a candidate is accountable to, and how much of that runs to people who cannot vote here.

Compare like with like. Out-of-state money flows into federal races, for the US Senate and US House, far more than into state races, so a statewide or legislative candidate will usually show a lower outside share than a federal one. Judge a filer against others seeking the same kind of office, not across office types.

Out-of-state money is not all large checks. Much of it comes from many small donors giving online, not a handful of wealthy ones, which is why the share of out-of-state donors runs higher than the share of out-of-state dollars. Read the outside percentage next to a filer's largest out-of-state sources to see which it is.

Lifetime and current cycle

The headline is the lifetime view, summed across every filer we map to a person. The current two-year election cycle is shown beside it with its exact date range, so a long career and a live campaign can be read separately.

Opposition spending

Money committees spend to elect a candidate is counted, as described above. Money spent against a candidate (opposition mail and advertising) is a separate question, and this release does not yet include it. When it is loaded it will appear on its own, kept apart from the money spent to support a candidate and never added to what the candidate raised.

The federal races

The U.S. Senate and House races on the Texas ballot sit in their own section, apart from the state index. A federal campaign raises from across the country by design, so outside money there is ordinary rather than the anomaly it is in a race for a Texas state office. Ranking a Senate candidate against a Railroad Commissioner on one scale would mislead. The federal section measures which candidates for a Texas seat in Washington lean on Texas, and which on money from elsewhere.

The federal figures come from the Federal Election Commission, not the Ethics Commission, and count two kinds of money into each campaign: itemized individual contributions to the candidate's principal committee, by the donor's reported state, and the PAC and party money that committee took in. Each committee's dollars are placed by the state its own donors live in, the same one-hop look-through described above, so a Washington PAC funded by Texans counts toward Texas and one funded from elsewhere does not. Small-dollar money filed without an address, and the small share of committee money with no traceable individual donors, are counted as unresolved rather than guessed. Each card shows the full outside share, the money raised, and how much of it rode in through PACs rather than individuals.

Sources

The underlying data is the Texas Ethics Commission's public bulk campaign-finance record, which covers the electronic filing era, roughly 2000 to the present. For out-of-state PACs that carry a federal id, we add the Federal Election Commission's public individual-contribution files for every cycle from 2000 to the present, to place those donors by state. The federal section draws on the same FEC individual files plus the FEC candidate master and the committee-to-candidate contribution file for the current cycle. The through-date is stated on every release. These are the same public filings that news organizations and transparency groups draw on, and every figure here can be reproduced from them.

Version

This is methodology calc/0.2.0. The full specification defines every number by its numerator, denominator, source class, and unresolved rule. Rules are versioned, and a changed rule produces a new release.