House Race Research: A Practical Guide for Campaign Teams

House race research starts by naming which house. The OppIntell homepage House card is subtitled Representatives. Its description is candidate research across U.S. House and state lower-chamber races. The House race page uses that same scope. This guide is the practical pass for that card. The nine-type map is /blog/9-types-of-race-specific-research-campaign-teams-need. The field manual is The Complete Guide to Evidence-Backed Opposition Research for Campaigns at /blog/the-complete-guide-to-evidence-backed-opposition-research-for-campaigns.

Build the file at /blog/how-to-build-a-citation-backed-candidate-research-dossier. Check a sentence before it reaches a memo at /blog/how-to-verify-political-claims-before-they-reach-a-campaign-memo. The sheet-or-platform comparison is /blog/campaign-research-platform-vs-spreadsheets-which-workflow-holds-up.

The working file is still the one the opposition-research page prints: identity and office, votes where a voting record exists, public statements, finance filings, financial disclosures, donor lines from those filings, and court records that match the person. Every claim the campaign intends to repeat carries a source. Office decides which of those sections can be filled. It does not change the citation rule.

What the House card covers

A House state page includes candidates whose race type is house. It also includes state-legislature records whose office title reads as a lower chamber, such as state representative, assembly, delegate, or house. It leaves out titles that read as senate or senator. Those titles stay with the State Legislature card, whose product page is titled State Senate Races and describes state upper-chamber research. The public race label for that card is State Legislature. Both labels are in the product. They are not two databases.

Write the office title from the filing on the first page, with the jurisdiction and the cycle. The methodology page deduplicates on legal name, jurisdiction, office, and filing identifiers, and it attaches a reliability score when two sources disagree. A U.S. House memo and a state-representative memo are not the same file just because both say house. The product path for this card is /house.

Open the filing that matches that office

A federal House candidate's money is often in FEC filings: receipts, disbursements, debts, and the report that is current after amendments. The opposition-research page says amended reports replace earlier totals. The methodology page's FEC intake also includes independent expenditures and Super PAC reports. Those are different committees from the candidate's principal campaign committee. Cite the committee the sentence is about. Do not add an outside spending report into the candidate's receipt total.

A state lower-chamber candidate may never appear in an FEC report. That finance section is the state disclosure. Secretary of State candidate filings from 47 states are the methodology page's state intake. Personal financial disclosures, where the office requires them, are a different form, with ranges set by the filing rules. Do not cite the committee report for a sentence about the personal disclosure, or the reverse. A donor line documents a reported gift. It does not, by itself, document a private promise.

Add a vote line only after service

A vote line belongs when a legislative record exists for that person and that bill. A challenger who has never served has no such record. The section stays empty. An empty section is the result, not a missing paragraph to fill from a neighboring district. A state representative's vote and a U.S. House member's vote are different journals. Name the chamber and the bill in the line.

Quotes stay stored as the words that were said, with the date and the place. A newspaper summary stays labeled as someone else's description. When a statement and a vote sit in tension, the homepage's contradiction flag is a prompt to open both documents. It is not, by itself, a finding about motive. If the memo needs both, cite both. If only the vote is in hand, the sentence stays a question. The methodology page's posture language, may, could, would examine, and appears consistent with, is how an open thread stays marked.

Keep the citation on the line that will ship

On a published briefing, each claim carries a source URL, a source type, and a citation validation status. The status records whether the cited document still exists at that URL and still contains the cited language. Named types include an FEC filing, a Secretary of State portal, a court record, an official campaign site, and a government press release. A claim that fails stays out of the public post until the source is re-resolved or replaced. A House mail piece can use that gate before anyone repeats the line.

The opposition-research page asks for the same pass on your own candidate. The homepage calls that reading the file the other side can build, with the same evidence-backed citations required on an opponent. Review on that homepage spine names analyst, senior, legal, and communications. Export names receipts, citations, and watermarking. The methodology page says candidate research records refresh daily and blog briefings regenerate hourly, so a vote line or a receipt total still has to name the document that was current when it was read.

A court record belongs in the House file only when it matches the identity block. A case caption that shares a surname with the candidate is a question, not a line ready for the mail. The same match rule applies to a donor name on an FEC report. Itemized contributions can be grouped so a reader sees concentration in the report. The grouping supports a sentence about the filings. It stops before a sentence about motive.

The House card shows a live count on the homepage. This guide does not treat that count as the database, and it does not add the nine race cards together. The canonical coverage sentence dated 2026-10-03 is 24,000 profiles in the public candidate-research index. The homepage counter on 2026-10-05 read 24,130. Use the dated sentence when a single figure is required, then check the live pages. The opposition-research page says the description is legal advice for no one.