Data Explanation for New Hampshire
Data Acquisition
The New Hampshire Secretary of State (NHSOS) provides access to campaign finance reports in two ways:
- Search Interfaces – The New Hampshire website provides several different interfaces to search for campaign finance information:
- Downloads – Receipt and expenditure data can be downloaded here.
Both of these sources have problems. The search interface (and its download option) fails for several small date ranges. The downloads are missing valuable data points, such as the type of contributor, which do exist in the search interface version.
Transparency USA uses the search interface downloads. Although this gives us the best data quality available, it does mean a few days’ worth of contribution data may be missing. We have reported this issue to the NHSOS, and hope they will find a way to resolve it.
Reported Data
When onboarding a new state, Transparency USA validates all imported data against report summaries in the state’s system whenever possible.
For reports filed in or before 2023, validation was challenging due to unclear or inconsistently followed date ranges. The date filters in the candidate, committee, and report search interfaces did not always match actual transaction dates, making it difficult to confirm completeness and accuracy. Although our data closely matched report summaries, exact alignment was not always possible.
In contrast, validation for 2024 data was much more precise. We are confident that we are correctly importing all available data, though pre-2024 data remains less reliable.
Candidates/Candidate Committees
These records represent the candidate committees registered to file campaign finance reports with the state.
Transparency USA imports all these records because they are the basis for transactional filing, providing high-level information about candidates and their committees.
Non-Candidate Committees and PACs
These records represent all non-candidate committees registered to file campaign finance reports with the state.
Transparency USA imports all these records because they are the basis for transactional filing, providing high-level information about committees.
Receipts
These records include all monetary, non-monetary, in-kind, and returned contributions. It does not include loans, even though loans are grouped with contributions in report summaries.
Transparency USA imports all data from these files. We import returned contributions as negative amounts, which helps rectify committees’ total spending with their report summaries.
Expenditures
Expenditures include all monetary, non-monetary, in-kind, and returned expenditures. However, returned expenditures are provided without details—only the date and the filing committee are listed. They are also not explicitly labeled as returns, but Transparency USA identified them mathematically during our validation process.
Transparency USA imports all data from these files. We import all returned expenditures as negative amounts, which helps rectify committees’ total spending with their report summaries. Since returned expenditures are unlabeled, we assume any unlabeled transaction is a return. If other transaction types are also unlabeled, they may currently be misclassified, though we have not found evidence of this.
Loans
These records include all loans.
Transparency USA imports all of these records and displays them in our loans tab. We found this data to be very unreliable. In some cases, loans appeared multiple times in the downloaded file, even though they didn’t in the search interface. There was no good way for Transparency USA to identify the duplicates, so please keep this in mind when reviewing loan information in New Hampshire. We found loan repayments in the expenditure data. However, it is not distinctly labeled, so we cannot label it accurately.
Filings & Reports
This search interface contains information about each report filed by a committee, such as filing dates (2024 onward), amendments, and transaction summaries.
While Transparency USA does not display any raw cover information on the website, transaction summaries to validate our categorizing.
Electronic Filing Requirements
New Hampshire is implementing new filing practices in 2025 with House Bill 1091, including the requirement to file electronically. Before 2025, paper filings were accepted, which Transparency USA has found to be very unreliable.
Since Transparency USA began onboarding New Hampshire after this change was announced, its full impact remains to be seen. However, the improvements in 2024 data during our validation process suggest that the transition to electronic filing will enhance data accuracy and reliability.
Party Information
Transparency USA displays the current party affiliation for active candidates and officeholders. The party information displayed may not be accurate:
- For candidates who are not actively running for or serving in state-level office
- When accessing candidate or officeholder data from previous election cycles
Party affiliation for active candidates and officeholders is provided by Ballotpedia.