How to Build a Citation-Backed Candidate Research Dossier

A citation-backed candidate research dossier is the file a campaign can hand to a second person. The public opposition-research page describes that file as identity, office, votes where a voting record exists, public statements, finance filings, financial disclosures, donor lines taken from those filings, and court records that match the person. Every claim the campaign intends to repeat carries a source. This how-to is the build order for that file. The wider map, including databases, report contents, and responsible use, is The Complete Guide to Evidence-Backed Opposition Research for Campaigns at /blog/the-complete-guide-to-evidence-backed-opposition-research-for-campaigns.

OppIntell publishes this sequence from pages already on the public site. The homepage introduces the product as opposition research software for campaigns, party committees, PACs, and consultants, with the same profile fields for every candidate. The methodology page says records begin as public sources, then land in one candidate universe. Nothing below adds a customer, a traffic figure, or a ranking.

Lock the identity before the first exhibit

Write the legal name, the office sought, the jurisdiction, and the cycle on the first page of the dossier. Add anyone else who shares the name. The opposition-research page treats Secretary of State filings and FEC committee names as the anchor, because a ballot name and a committee name are often different strings. A file that starts from a nickname or a headline can attach the wrong vote or the wrong donor report. If two candidates in the same state share a surname, put a middle name, a city, or a committee ID on that first page so a later researcher does not merge them.

Those fields match the deduplication keys on the methodology page: legal name, jurisdiction, office, and filing identifiers from the source registry. Each upstream source also carries a reliability score, so a later query can prefer the more authoritative record when two sources disagree. The dossier should show which identifier won, not a blended name that no filing uses.

Office changes which exhibits exist. The opposition-research page says House, Senate, governor, mayor, legislature, judicial, and local contests draw on different mixes of the same record types. A federal candidate's money is often in FEC filings. A mayor's filing is often at the city or county. A legislator's vote record exists only after service. Leave a section empty when the person has no record of that type. An empty section is more useful than a line invented to fill the template.

The dossier also needs a refresh rule. The methodology page says blog briefings regenerate hourly and candidate research records refresh daily. When a candidate withdraws, a committee terminates, or a filing is amended, the research record is reprocessed on the next ingestion run. The finance section should name the report period and the amendment, not a total copied once and left in place. That is why the opposition-research page says to cite the report that is current. A dossier that cannot show which version was read will not survive the next filing deadline.

Pull only the records that match that identity

The methodology page names three production intakes. Federal Election Commission filings cover candidate committees, principal campaign committees, independent expenditures, and Super PAC reports. Secretary of State candidate filings come from 47 states. County-level candidate registrations come from the four county adapters in production. Ingestion runs on a schedule because filings change, committees terminate, and a one-shot copy goes stale.

For a federal candidate, read receipts, disbursements, and debts, and cite the report that is current after amendments. The opposition-research page says amended reports replace earlier totals. For a state or local candidate, use the state or local disclosure system. A state or local candidate may never appear in an FEC report. Personal financial disclosures are a different form from the committee's finance report. Some offices require a disclosure that lists income, assets, and liabilities in ranges set by the filing rules. Keep that form in its own section so a sentence does not cite the wrong document.

Votes, quotes, and cases follow the same match rule. A vote line belongs when a legislative record exists for that person and that bill. A quote stores the words that were said, with the date and the place. A newspaper summary, a staff recollection, and a clipped caption are descriptions by someone else, and the opposition-research page says the file should label them that way. A court record belongs when it matches the identity block. A shared surname is not a match.

Donor lines sit inside the finance filings. Itemized contributions, PAC support, and recurring employers can be grouped so a reader sees concentration by industry, family, or PAC. That grouping supports a sentence about the reports. A sentence about why a donor gave, or what was promised in private, needs its own public source. A gift can sit beside a vote. The dossier states that both documents exist, and it stops there.

Put a citation on every line that will leave the desk

On a published OppIntell briefing, the homepage and the opposition-research page describe the same citation. Each claim carries a source URL and a source type. Named types include an FEC filing, a Secretary of State portal, a court record, an official campaign site, and a government press release. The methodology page names the check citation_validation_status: whether the cited document still exists at that URL and still contains the cited language. A claim that fails validation stays out of the public post.

Copy that habit into the dossier even when the line will never be a public URL. If the link dies or the bill number is wrong, the line comes out until it is fixed. The methodology page says a broken citation holds the affected post back until the source is re-resolved or replaced. A dossier that keeps a dead link "because the printout was right in March" has left that rule.

Where the record supports a direct fact, state it and cite the record. Where the record only opens a question, use the posture language the methodology page publishes: "may," "could," "would examine," and "appears consistent with." A communications writer should be able to see which sentences are closed and which are still threads. The longer discussion of that constraint is in the pillar guide linked above.

Assemble the dossier in an order a second person can audit

Lead with identity and office, including the disambiguators. Then votes and position history where a voting record exists. Then public statements, stored as the words that were said. Then campaign finance filings, financial disclosures, and donor information taken from those filings. Then court records that match the person. The opposition-research page uses that checklist for a working file. An OppIntell profile, as that page describes it, organizes the same fields plus contradiction flags and packets meant for communications review before anyone repeats a line. Research books are prepared per candidate. The page says profile access is priced per month, per profile.

Contradiction flags, as the homepage and the opposition-research page use the term, mark a statement and another public record that sit in tension. The flag tells the reader to open both documents. It is not, by itself, a finding about motive. Receipts keep a line checkable after it leaves the desk. The public llms.txt page describes a receipt for a single published finding: the claim, a source link, a capture timestamp, a content hash, and supersession history. A dossier can follow that shape on paper: the sentence, the URL, the date the record was read, and a note when a later amendment supersedes it.

Some material stays in a question log instead of the dossier. An unsourced social post can start a question. The opposition-research page's rule is that it becomes a claim when a public record answers it. The methodology page says anonymous tips and unverifiable sourcing are outside the pipeline, and that records trace to a named public source.

Run the same build on your own candidate

The opposition-research page calls the second build the mirror file. Before the packet is written, ask which sentences the same public records could support about your candidate: an old quote against a current vote, a disclosure that omits a later-reported asset, a donor pattern, or a case that only shares a name. The homepage describes the same idea as reading the file the other side can build, with the same evidence-backed citations required on an opponent.

The homepage's operating spine is Capture, Govern, Analyze, Review, Export. Review names analyst, senior, legal, and communications. Export names receipts, citations, and watermarking. Identity stays fixed while those reviews happen. A new FEC report can arrive while quotes are still being matched to votes. A line still waits for a source before it enters the packet. The opposition-research page says the page is a research description and legal advice for no one. Recording conversations, entering a system that is not public, and using personal data that a statute treats differently from a campaign filing are questions for the campaign's own counsel.

Public hubs are the place to start the build when the person is already in the index. State pages live at /states. Race pages live at /races. Individual public profiles live under /candidates. The opposition-research page points at a race-and-state example, California mayor candidates at /races/california/mayor, as a way to see a field before opening one person. The homepage also shows race-family cards for House, Senate, governors, mayors, executive, statewide executive, state legislature, local, and judicial. Those cards are a browsing layout. This how-to does not add them together and does not treat a card total as the database.

The canonical coverage sentence on the public facts page, dated 2026-10-03, is 24,000 U.S. political candidates: profiles in the public candidate-research index, all parties, federal, state, and local, deduplicated and index-gated. The homepage counter is a separate live reading. On 2026-10-05 it showed 24,130 total profiles. Use the dated sentence when a single figure is required, and check the live pages rather than treating either number as permanent. The full field manual remains the pillar at /blog/the-complete-guide-to-evidence-backed-opposition-research-for-campaigns.