Do you want to compare how much elected officials are receiving in contributions and from which groups? Use this visualization to find out and to see how that money is influencing politicians' votes. This visualization is based on the 2009-2010 election cycle.

Instructions: Use the controls in the upper right to select a party and the metric to compare. The top graph shows the relationship between the selected metric and dollars contributed. The bottom graph shows the ordering of elected officials by the selected metric. The right hand side shows the relevant interest groups or contributors. Note that a vote influenced is defined as a vote for which a contribution was received within 30 days of the vote and the contributor advocated for the position the legislator took on the bill.

Sources: All data for this visualization is from http://maplight.org/california/legislator for contributions to elected officials within 30 days of votes on bills. Maplight collects this data by beginning with annual LegInfo reports on endorsements and oppositions for each bill. Then, Maplight cross references each interest group that took a stance on a bill with campaign contribution data from the National Institute on Money in Politics. Learn more about the data at http://maplight.org/california/guide/data.