K Street Analytics - a newsletter covering the GR landscape in Washington D.C.
This post introduces K Street Analytics. Our weekly newsletter applies statistical analysis to unique data to deliver weekly insights into Washington D.C.’s government relations and policy landscape.
What to Look Forward to
Data-driven insights are becoming ever more important in all areas of life, including government relations and public policy. While much of the data on federal lobbying and campaign contributions is in the public record, it can be difficult to access, work with, and contextualize, and as a result it is often difficult for even seasoned professionals to identify trends and patterns, and to recognize changes in their environment. We empower our readers by making the government relations and policy landscape more legible.
The Quarterly Cycle of K Street Analytics
The data we work with includes dozens of different data-sources that are getting ingested and combined into a single unified relational database. Some data-sources update frequently, but the two most central data-series - lobbying filing and campaign contribution filings - are both on a quarterly cycle. Registered lobbyists are required to file their quarterly activities by the 15th of January, April, July and October, and candidate committees and PACs registered with the FEC also need to do so by those dates.
Our newsletter follows this quarterly filing-rhythm. Every quarter, subscribers of K Street Analytics receive 12 newsletters (one per week) that analyze different aspects of the previous quarter’s data, and flag newcomers, interesting patterns, deviations from normal trends and statistical outliers.
Each newsletter covers a distinct topic:
The Big Picture, and Government Branches Lobbied: an overall assessment of lobbying activity in the previous quarter: dollar-amounts spent, how many clients hired how many lobbying firms and lobbyists to lobby how many branches of the federal government on what issues
Lobby Firms: a deep dive into the most active lobby-firms: who was most active, representing how many clients for what dollar-value in contracts?
Terminated Contracts and New Registrations: which firms registered to lobby for the first time, and which terminated existing lobbying-registrations
Lobbyists: a deep dive into the top lobbyists last quarter
Key Issues: a deep dive into last quarter’s most lobbied issues
Most Lobbied-On Bills: a deep dive into last quarter’s most lobbied-on bills in congress
Lobbying by Sector: a deep dive into the sectors that did the most lobbying, and which institutions and subjects they lobbied on
Lobbying Activity by Organizations: which organizations did the most lobbying, and which had the biggest changes in their lobbying-engagement
Lobbying and PAC Contributions: connecting an organization’s lobbying with its PAC contributions. What lobbying organizations also have PACs? How do organizations’ economic sector and their lobby-activity correlate with their PAC giving?
Legislators: which politicians received the most PAC contributions last quarter, and who was most active in funding their committees?
Congressional Committees: Aggregating politicians’ committee-receipts to the committee-level, which industries focused their giving on which committees. How did lobbying on specific bills impact campaign giving to politicians on the committees responsible for these bills?
Challengers: which non-incumbent challengers attracted the most campaign contribution support and from where?