by Gus Voss | 2014-05-06

Following the money at FollowTheMoney.org just got easier.

The National Institute on Money in State Politics is thrilled to announce the newest chapter in our 24 years of following the money: beta.FollowTheMoney.org. We invite you on a 1-minute tour:

The new website offers an intuitive design and allows complex searches that you can save and return to later. The new data architecture is our own artificial intelligence, created by the Institute’s computer whizzes to find and resolve problems such as the chronic issue of committees listing multiple variations of the same donor name. For instance, we found an astonishing 2,337 ways to report AT&T and its state affiliates; 1,406 ways to list Verizon; 1,206 ways to say Hospital Corp of America; 878 ways to International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The list goes on—but thanks to the unique new entity resolution system, you’ll find one name for each.

2013 data is now available, such as the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial election.

Our newest expansion provides a stunning array of options to follow the influence of money in politics through Ask Anything, which allows you to easily dive into the sea of campaign finance data, using any variety of 100+ search filters ranging from candidate name to economic business classification.

With one easy search, you can view campaign contributions on a multi-level stage in a single state, such as Montana. Maybe you just read our report, “Names in the News: Duke Energy,” and you want to see all of Duke Energy’s contributions across state and federal campaigns in 2012. Or you might want to look through a different filter to find a candidate’s state and federal campaigns, such as Mitt Romney, who ran for Massachusetts governor in 2002 and U.S. president in 2012.

Space and time are items of the past, so if you want a robust context for the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s giving around Washington’s 2013 GMO labeling ballot measure, take a look at all of Grocery Manufacturers Association’s donations we’ve documented since we started collecting data.

We are even collecting local data for a select few cities.

Additionally, myFollowTheMoney members can save searches and download data, so they will not have to remember all the intricate details of a complicated query.

What are you waiting for? Be sure to check out our quick tutorials, then dive into the data at beta.FollowTheMoney.org, and let us know what you think.