Developers

Political data API

API and MCP server covering campaign finance, lobbying, government contracts, congressional legislation, and SEC filings. One unified entity layer across six federal data sources.

Interactive docs OpenAPI spec

Authentication

All requests require an API key passed via the x-api-key header.

Go to Settings and create an API key

Pass your key as x-api-key header

Quick start

100 requests per minute on the free tier.

curl

curl -H "x-api-key: ps_your_key_here" \
  "https://www.poliscope.org/api/v1/politicians?q=warren&limit=3"

JavaScript

const res = await fetch(
  "https://www.poliscope.org/api/v1/politicians?q=warren&limit=3",
  { headers: { "x-api-key": "ps_your_key_here" } }
);
const { data, meta } = await res.json();

Python

import requests

r = requests.get(
    "https://www.poliscope.org/api/v1/politicians",
    params={"q": "warren", "limit": 3},
    headers={"x-api-key": "ps_your_key_here"}
)
data = r.json()["data"]

Response format

{
  "data": [ ... ],
  "meta": {
    "limit": 3,
    "offset": 0,
    "source": "poliscope"
  }
}

Endpoints

29 endpoints across 11 resource types. All GET, all authenticated via API key.

Politicians

GET

FEC candidates with fundraising totals, top donors, and industry breakdown

/api/v1/politicians

Legislators

GET

Congressional members with bioguide IDs, committee assignments, and voting records

/api/v1/legislators

Donors

GET

Campaign donors ranked by total contributions with recipient details

/api/v1/donors

Committees

GET

FEC political committees — PACs, party committees, campaign committees

/api/v1/committees

Companies

GET

Unified company profiles linking SEC filings, contracts, and lobbying

/api/v1/companies

Lobbying

GET

LDA lobbying disclosures — clients, firms, spending, and issue areas

/api/v1/lobbying/clients

Bills

GET

Congressional legislation with sponsors, status tracking, and subject tags

/api/v1/bills

Contracts

GET

USAspending government contracts and grants by recipient and agency

/api/v1/contracts/recipients

Elections

GET

Election analytics — races, state totals, spending trends, outside spending

/api/v1/elections/overview

Search

GET

Cross-source search across politicians, companies, lobbying, and bills

/api/v1/search

Stats

GET

Platform-wide aggregate counts and totals

/api/v1/stats

MCP Server

Connect AI tools directly to Poliscope data.

The Poliscope MCP server exposes all 29 API endpoints as tools for AI assistants. Install via npm — no repo clone needed.

Get an API key from Settings, then add one of these configs:

Claude Code / Claude Desktop

claude mcp add poliscope -e POLISCOPE_API_KEY=ps_your_key_here -- npx poliscope-mcp

Cursor — .cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "poliscope": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["poliscope-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "POLISCOPE_API_KEY": "ps_your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Available tools

list_politiciansget_politicianlist_legislatorsget_legislatorlist_donorssearch_donorsget_donorlist_committeesget_committeelist_companies

get_companylist_lobbying_clientsget_lobbying_clientlist_lobbying_firmsget_lobbying_statslist_billsget_billlist_contract_recipientslist_contract_agenciesget_stats

searchget_elections_overviewlist_election_raceslist_state_totalslist_zip_codeslist_employer_totalslist_spending_trendsget_outside_spendinglist_outside_spending_targets

Usage

Rate limits

100 requests per minute on the free tier. Get an API key from Settings.

Response format

All endpoints return { data, meta } envelope. Pagination via limit and offset.

Data freshness

FEC bulk data updated with each official release. Congressional data synced daily. Contracts and lobbying updated quarterly.

Entity resolution

29M cross-source match candidates link people and organizations across FEC, lobbying, contracts, SEC, and congressional records.