Guide to Candidate Profile

This guide will illustrate how to profile a candidate running for office on a federal (i.e. the U.S. House or Senate) or state (i.e. governor) level. Profiling a candidate involves examining a variety of factors that influences a decision to run for office. Biographical information, district or state demographic makeup, voting records, campaign monies, news reports each contribute to that decision.

Biographical Information

Besides news clippings, these sources can provide biographical information on a candidate, incumbent or challenger:

Demographics

Explore the make-up of the district or state the candidate plans to represent. Within the appropriate, pre-determined geographical boundary, certain issues will appeal to certain segments of the population. Breaking down a geographical constituency will give some insight to its concerns and, consequently, where the candidate stands on certain issues.

• Demographic guide--national level A guide created and maintained by the Government Publications Library at the University of Colorado at Boulder for demographic information on a national scale.
• Demographic guide--other levels A guide created and maintained by the Government Publications Library at the University of Colorado at Boulder for available statistics of cities, states or counties.

  Demographics by Congressional District

• MapStats Use this Census Bureau service to identify Congressional Districts. District information includes links to Member's home page and a search of the 1990 census data by district for demographics. The two data series are: 
  • STF1D: Population and housing unit totals tabulated from every census questionnaire; includes race, ethnicity, age, marital status, households.
  • STF3D: Estimated population and housing unit totals based on tabulations from only the sample questionnaires; also includes tables on disability, education, income and poverty, and work experience.
• This information can also be found in print in the Government Publications library at C3.223/20:1990CPH-4-#

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Voting Records

Voting records reveal much about where a candidate stands on the issues. The records make it easy to compare public rhetorical stances with actual votes.

• Congressional Universe Available only on campus Contains information on congressional legislation and legislators. 
• Thomas Publicly available legislative information via the Library of Congress. 
• Project Vote Smart Covers actions of over 13,000 political leaders: President, Congress, Governors and State Legislatures. 
• Voting Records of Members of Congress Page maintained by the Library of Congress which links to sources of voting records and special interest evaluations of Congressional members. 
• League of Conservation Voters Scorecard Rates House and Senate members on votes related to the environment. 
• National Freedom Scorecard-ACLU A new site from the ACLU, it tracks how members of the 105th Congress (1998) voted on issues of civil liberties. Also contains some information on the 104th Congress (1997).

  Statewide offices

• News reports may offer good sources to check on voting behavior. Also, individual states may post this information on their websites but you will probably have to dig around for it. Try this metasite Internet Sites of the State Legislatures and look for the clerk's office within each state.

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Money

Someone has to pay for the campaign and even with the emergence of a small coterie of millionaire self-financing candidates, most people running for office still look to contributions to pay for the effort. Knowing who contributed how much to which candidates gives insight into the behind-the-scenes forces involved in different races.

• Federal Election Commission Campaign Finance Information for the 1998 House and Senate Elections as well as the 1996 Presidential Election. Information about Campaign Finance Law. Now includes:
  • FEC Disclosure Reports Reports filed by House Campaigns, Party Committees, and Political Action Committees. No Senate campaign filings have been imaged (1996-present).
• FEC Info Maintained by a former FEC employee, this non-government sponsored site contains FEC data with additional search features including by contributor name and largest contributors by state. Individual hard money contributions span from 1980-1998; soft money donations cover from 1993 to present. 
• Common Cause "A non-profit, non-partisan citizen's lobbying organization promoting open, honest and accountable government." Includes scorecards on Members of Congress and campaign finance reform, state-by-state data and legislative updates. 
• Center for Responsive Politics Includes a race-by-race analysis of campaign contributions for the 1998 elections, a search feature for votes on significant issues, detailed analysis of major PAC contributions. CRP also maintains: 
  • 1998 Congressional Profiles Choose a state and see where the flow of money ends in the 1998 election.
  • Who Paid for this Election? A Special Report on Fundraising Patterns in the 1998 Elections As the title indicates, this report examines fundraising in the 1998 campaign.
  • Where the Money Is Choose a state in this Atlas of Campaign Cash and find out how much industry sectors, individual companies and other donors spent in 1998 races. 
• Washington's Other Scandal Aired in September of 1998 on PBS, this Bill Moyers' Frontline piece showcases the techniques -- legal or not -- used by both major political parties to finance the 1996 elections.

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What does this money buy? Most importantly, it buys television advertising.

Advertising and Media Markets

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News Reports

Television & Radio 
• C-SPAN Like the non-partisan, non-biased cable channel that broadcasts Senate and House proceedings when in session, this site provides a plethora of public affairs information. Famous for its "Road to the White House" and "Campaign 19xx" series.
• National Public Radio In-depth coverage of a variety of issues, including politics. Includes a searchable archive.
• Editor & Publisher Media Info Links to World News A directory of newspapers, television, radio, magazine, and city guide sites.

  Newspapers 

• Newspapers on the Internet Meta-site from the Internet Public Library. 
• The Washington Post Two week old stories are free to print; otherwise you have to pay roughly $2-$4/per article in the archives which date back to September 1986. 
• The New York Times To access the entire paper, you have to register (free). Searching is free and covers the past 365 days of Times' and Encylopedia Britannica On-line articles. Whether you print or download to disk, the cost is $2.50/article. 
• Roll Call Online One of two Capital Hill newspapers, it includes policy briefings, committee assignments, information on new members, richest Senators and Representatives and other information. Articles are not archived electronically so you have to keep checking. The print edition is issued on Mondays and Thursdays. 
• Congressional Quarterly Highlights of weekly news February 27, 1997 through present.

  Full Text News Resources from Chinook Available only on campus The Article Access menu provides access to databases that contain full text news resources. 

• Dialog@Carl includes full text of local and national newspapers and national and international news services.
• Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe includes text from regional, national, and international newspapers and news services.

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State Resources

• State and Local Governments (Library of Congress) A meta site linking to other resources for state and local government. 
• State and Local Governments on the Net A meta site linking to other resources for state and local government. 
• Internet Sites of the State Legislatures Links to individual state legislatures. 
• Project Vote Smart Covers actions of over 13,000 political leaders: President, Congress, Governors and State Legislatures. 
• Demographic guide--other levels A guide created and maintained by the Government Publications Library at the University of Colorado at Boulder for available statistics of cities, states or counties

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1998 Election Specific Sites 

• Web White & Blue A major goal of Web White & Blue is to promote those sites that contain useful election information. Web White & Blue opened to the general public on Wednesday, October 7 with Web White & Blue Day. This Internet-wide initiative ran through the November U.S. election. 
• 1998 Congressional Profiles A search feature for votes on significant issues and detailed analysis of major PAC contributions from the Center for Responsive Politics. 
• Yahoo! 1998 Election Coverage Includes news coverage and links to other guides. 
• 1998 Political Ads Part of C-SPAN's website, you can sample ads from 1998 gubernatorial and congressional races. Requires RealVideo. (Click here to go to Real Networks.)

Previous Elections

• Election Statistics "Since 1920, the Clerk of the House has collected and published the official vote counts for federal elections from the official sources among the various states and territories. These documents, out of print for many years, have been collected and scanned in a format to make them once again available to researchers and students." Older publications in Adobe Acrobat format. 
• Electoral College Page from the National Archives and Records Administration includes electoral college box scores 1788-1996, number of electoral college members by state for 1992 and 1996 and other information.