Methodology

Overview

The Sellout Index is a composite score (0–100) that quantifies how entangled a member of Congress is with corporate and special interest money. It combines six independent signals, each converted to a percentile rank across all current members, then combined via a weighted average.

A higher score means more financial entanglement — not necessarily corruption. A low score doesn't mean a politician is "good" and a high score doesn't mean they're "bad." The index measures observable financial patterns from public disclosures.

Scoring Categories

Normalization

Raw values in each category are converted to percentile ranks (0-100) across all current members of Congress. This handles the wildly different scales between categories (dollars vs. count vs. percentage) and is robust to skewed distributions where a few members dominate.

When data for a category is unavailable, that category's weight is redistributed proportionally among the remaining categories. A "confidence score" indicates how many of the six signals were available.

Data Sources

• Stock Trades: STOCK Act disclosures via Senate/House financial disclosure databases
• Campaign Finance: Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings
• Voting Records: Congressional roll call votes via official records
• Lobbying: Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings
• Revolving Door: Staff employment transition records
• Net Worth: Annual financial disclosure forms

All data is sourced from publicly available government databases and disclosure systems.