Microproduct data guideintermediate

Senate LDA Lobbying Disclosures

Federal lobbying registrations and activity reports for building client and issue disclosure monitors from Senate LDA filings.

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At a glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Medium · ≤1 GB
Formats
JSON, XML
Access
API or Download
API key
Not required
Provider
United States Senate
Updates
Daily
Data terms
U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

The Senate LDA API lists lobbying filings, registrants, and clients. Start with a small page of recent filings. Reported income is self-disclosed, issue codes are broad, and a filing is not a complete map of influence.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open the LDA API documentation and choose the filings list endpoint.
  2. 2.Request one page of recent filings.
  3. 3.Keep filing UUID, registrant, client, and filing type.
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3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import pandas as pd
import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://lda.gov/api/v1/filings/",
    params={"page_size": 25, "ordering": "-dt_posted"},
    timeout=30,
    headers={"Accept": "application/json"},
)
response.raise_for_status()
filings = pd.json_normalize(response.json()["results"])
filings["retrieved_at_utc"] = pd.Timestamp.now(tz="UTC")
print(filings.head())
4

Test a useful signal

Scan recent LDA filings

Test whether the filings list can power a bounded lobbying-disclosure inbox.

  1. 01Keep filing identifier, registrant name, client name, and posted date.
  2. 02Count filings by registrant on the first page and list missing client names.
  3. 03Explain that LDA reports are self-disclosed summaries and are not a complete record of lobbying contacts.

Dataset details

United States Senate is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-18. Temporal coverage: LDA registrations and quarterly activity reports.

Theme

Government & Policy

Domains

Public PolicyRegulationLegislation

Data types

TabularDocuments

Tasks

Disclosure MonitoringClient ResearchLegislative Monitoring

Geography

United States

Formats

JSONXML

Provider

United States Senate

Data terms

U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance