Center Field Politics is a non-partisan project that turns public political data into simplified “baseball cards” for elected officials and candidates. The goal is to make voting records, campaign finance, issue positions, and ideology easier to understand at a glance — while keeping the underlying sources visible and the analysis transparent.
Our approach
We aim to stay between the right- and left-field foul lines. Data is presented with cited sources; media/source bias is labeled separately from a candidate’s own ideology; and every metric maps to a published formula, a source-priority tier, a confidence level, and dated citations. Where information is partial or a figure is an estimate, we say so rather than guess.
Where the data comes from
Federal campaign finance comes from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) OpenFEC API; federal voting and legislative activity from Congress.gov and GovTrack; and state and local figures from state ethics and election agencies. News and commentary are used for context and are attributed with a media-bias label. Full details are in the methodology.
Coverage and how states are added
The Site currently focuses on a set of officials and races and is expanding over time. When you select a state that is not yet loaded, the Site asks for confirmation before retrieving available public data. Federal officials for a state can be populated from public sources; state- and local-level officials are added only after a verified data review and are never auto-generated.
Independence
Center Field Politics is independent and not affiliated with any candidate, campaign, party, or government or election authority. See the disclaimer and terms of use.
Officials, campaigns, and corrections
We welcome corrections from anyone, and we invite officials and campaigns to help keep their information accurate. If you spot an error or want to submit updated, sourced information, use the corrections page. Submissions from officials and campaigns are reviewed and shown alongside the data — we do not silently overwrite the record.