Top Takers

Croton Research LLC

About this app

Independent, non-government, non-partisan and all free, the Top Takers app helps you to push back against the influence of money in US Federal politics as revealed by public FEC data (see below). The app focuses on election donations to candidates by special interests like corporations and pressure groups. Sadly, most candidates accept this money, some more than others. Those who take the most are the Top Takers.

The app makes it easy to discover how much money any member of Congress has taken from special interests. If you don't like what you see, you can use the app to create a short video about the money that can be shared on social media.

Sharing your video can raise awareness of how much money candidates take from special interests, and help to clean up politics!

Please note that neither Croton Research LLC nor the Top Takers app represents a Government entity or affiliated with one.

The data used by Top Takers is published by
the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a US Government
Agency (see the FEC Candidates page at https://www.fec.gov/data/browse-data/?tab=candidates), and is curated by OpenSecrets.org, a
non-profit corporation (see their Congressional Races page at https://www.opensecrets.org/races).

We're non-partisan and want to call out Top Takers, irrespective of their party.

What’s new

The animated pages created by this release can be more easily converted into a video whose 16:9 aspect ratio is what is required by social media platforms which support short-form video (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube etc). The content of the animated pages now fits into that aspect ratio. Use screen video capture on your phone, then in the Crop tool in Photos select the 16:9 aspect ratio.