Center Field Politics is a philanthropic, non-partisan voter-education project. It turns scattered public data into simple, easy-to-read “baseball card” profiles of elected officials and candidates, so voters can understand who represents them, what they have done, and how to make a more informed decision.
Why it exists
Most of us know more about our favorite athletes than we do about our elected officials — and that is no surprise. The facts that matter are spread across the internet, buried in filings, votes, and disclosures. It is a classic big-data problem: no one has the time to gather and interpret it all. So we end up informed by convenience — polarized news and social media. Center Field Politics is built to work for voters on the Left, the Right, and the Center alike.
How it works
We use generative AI to data-mine publicly available, verified sources and assess each official or candidate in a standardized way, deliberately setting aside sensational news and commentary. AI-assisted analysis can still contain errors, so where information is partial or estimated, we say so rather than guess. The exact formulas, source-priority tiers, confidence levels, and validation steps behind every number are published in the methodology.
What you can do with it
Search by state, candidate, or election, and filter results by the issues that matter most to you. Each profile provides a quick summary alongside a detailed analysis, and you can compare up to three profiles side by side to make a judgment call quickly — without waiting on the latest sensational accusation.
What we measure
Profiles focus on simple, revealing facts rather than noise, including (each links to its exact formula in the methodology):
- Age and years in elected office
- Net worth, and how it has changed since taking office
- Efforts to work across the aisle with Democrats, Republicans, and Independents
- Whether their votes stay true to their campaign promises
- Where campaign donations come from, and signs of undue corporate or undisclosed influence
- Legal convictions — not accusations
- And more
Where the data comes from
Federal campaign finance comes from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) OpenFEC API; federal voting and legislative activity from Congress.gov and GovTrack; and state and local figures from state ethics and election agencies. News and commentary are used only for context and are attributed with a media-bias label that is kept separate from a candidate’s own ideology.
Coverage and how states are added
The Site currently focuses on a set of officials and races and is expanding over time. When you select a state that is not yet loaded, the Site asks for confirmation before retrieving available public data. Federal officials for a state can be populated from public sources; state- and local-level officials are added only after a verified data review and are never auto-generated.
What we’ve learned
Democracy depends on an educated electorate, but the facts are hidden in plain sight. A few things stood out as we built this: simple facts like age and years in office are surprisingly revealing; officials who work across the aisle are too often condemned rather than celebrated; and much of what we accept in politics would not be tolerated elsewhere. Our aim is to give you what you need to vote intelligently, without being subject to the whims of biased news sources or social-media influencers.
Independence
Center Field Politics is independent and not affiliated with any candidate, campaign, party, or government or election authority. See the disclaimer and terms of use.
Support this project
This is a self-funded, proof-of-concept tool. If you find it useful, you can make a voluntary contribution to help cover its infrastructure, AI/data-processing, and development costs — including the cost of loading additional states. This is support for the website itself, not a political contribution and not tax deductible. Learn more on the support page.
Officials, campaigns, and corrections
We welcome corrections from anyone, and we invite officials and campaigns to help keep their information accurate. If you spot an error or want to submit updated, sourced information, use the corrections page. Submissions from officials and campaigns are reviewed and shown alongside the data — we do not silently overwrite the record.