Learning about sources of political spending can be “like unpacking a Russian nesting doll,” says Michael Beckel, a politics reporter for the Center for Public Integrity.

Using tax filings as his primary source, Beckel investigated the third most politically-active nonprofit in 2012 as part of the Center for Public Integrity’s Consider the Source project.

 “In all, we examined records from the Internal Revenue Service, Federal Election Commission, Federal Communications Commission, the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office and the California Secretary of State’s office,”  Beckel said. The tax documents contained information the FEC filings didn’t have ...

Richard Ben Cramer, a journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 as a foreign correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer, died this week from complications of lung cancer. Cramer's writing career spanned politics and sports, and in addition to the Inquirer his work appeared in magazines such as Esquire and Rolling Stone. Cramer authored several books, including What It Takes: The Way to the White House, an in-depth look at the 1988 presidential election.

This week, IRE pulled a 1991 Esquire story by Richard Ben Cramer from its archives:

George Bush: How He Got Here
"A life of ease ...

NICAR adviser David Herzog will be on hand Tuesday, Nov. 20 at 2 p.m Eastern (11 a.m. Pacific) for a live Q&A about EconoCheck on the Journalism Accelerator. EconoCheck, an IRE-Sunlight Foundation resource launched during the 2012 campaign, helps reporters quickly find and understand data about key indicators. Drop by to discuss how journalists can continue to tap into it for post-election economic reporting and how we might improve it.

What do you think about the way EconoCheck presents tools and information? Please join us to share your experience and ask anything you want to know.

For help in the scramble to provide instant results and analysis -- all while sorting through close decisions on the local and federal level --  check out these resources for adding depth to your election night coverage, the day after stories and long range post-election stories. Also, check out our look at data-driven stories leading up to election day.

What's being done

• The Los Angeles Times site had a presidential map as well as a map of California showing how counties voted on candidate races and ballot measures.
• The Huffington Post also had an election center, complete with map and table ...

If you ever get the urge to feel a chill run down your spine, particularly if you're interested in political journalism, give Sasha Issenberg's new book The Victory Lab a good, close read.

Here's the headline: When it comes to using data to understand politics, journalists are playing checkers while political consultants are playing chess. Just listen to the debate that has surfaced in recent weeks around The New York Times' polling specialist, Nate Silver. The venerable Fourth Estate, whose job it is to hold the political system accountable, often lacks the skills to understand, let alone ...

How has data been used in advance of the election season? We've been looking for good data visualizations and data-driven reporting centered on the upcoming elections. Below is what we've found. Help add to our list by emailing suggestions to tony@ire.org or tweeting us @IRE_NICAR.

The Washington Post
The Post's 2012 election map shows what's still in play for the presidential, senate, house and governor races, along with a breakdown by income, race, urban vs. rural, marriage rigthts and swing states. 

The New York Times
The Times' Election 2012 package includes, among many other ...

Mother Jones magazine shook up the presidential campaign on Monday when it released a video it obtained of Republican candidate Mitt Romney speaking at a private fundraiser. The  video included the following comment from Romney, which many have taken issue with:

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food ...

There are several ways that political funds can play a role in key states, especially during an election year. In IRE's 2012 election coverage webinar from Derek Willis of The New York Times, you’ll see how to trace money that comes from outside sources to state-based political groups, and how to follow the path of expenditures from the ground game to the air wars.

Click here to view the webinar.

Made possible through a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

By Chelsea Sheasley
@csheasley 

What’s the best way to follow the money, especially in an election year? Joe Stephens, The Washington Post, Duff Wilson, Reuters, and Angie Moreschi, a former investigative reporter and now director of communications at James Hoyer Law Firm, shared the databases and documents that helped them in their latest investigations during their panel, Paying for Political Favor.

Stephens, who covered the Solyndra scandal, stressed that “these documents are ones that I’ve used over and over again,” in his career, from covering the environment and stimulus spending, to reporting on the presidential election, and state ...

 By Beverly Magley and Anne Sherwood
National Institute on Money in State Politics

For your stories about 2012 state elections, check out free campaign-finance information at The National Institute on Money in State Politics (followthemoney.org), a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization. In addition to downloadable data sets, you can mine reports on trends and anomalies, as well as overviews that compare and contrast campaigns and elections in all 50 states.

Here are the trends and issues the Institute is watching this year and some resources that can help you report on them:

• Independent spending is on everyone’s radar since the ...