Us Race Matchups

@pipeworx/us-race-matchups

Who is on the ballot in a US House district or Senate seat: the incumbent, every FEC-registered candidate by party with the money behind them, which of them won a primary, and the primary and general election dates. Built for the 2026 midterms (general election 3 November 2026); works for any even cycle.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1858+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• race_matchup(state, office, district?, cycle?, special?) — one race. Returns the incumbent, candidates (party, incumbent status, total receipts, disbursements, cash on hand, the date each candidate's money runs through, won_primary), primary result tables with vote counts and share, and the primary, runoff and general election dates. A district with no candidates returns an error naming the districts that do have candidates; a state with no Senate race that cycle says so; a race with no primary table says so in primary_results_note instead of returning an empty list.
• list_races(state, office?, cycle?) — every race in a state with how many candidates registered and who the incumbent is. Use it to find a district number.

Auth

Platform key (the shared data.gov key the gateway already holds for the FEC pack). Callers pass nothing.

Data sources

• FEC, candidate and committee filings — candidates, party, incumbent status, receipts, disbursements, cash on hand. Federal public record.
• FEC, election calendar — primary, runoff and general election dates.
• Wikipedia, 2026 race pages — primary vote counts and which candidates advanced. This is a volunteer-compiled source, not an official one; every response labels it and lists the state election authority the page cites (for example "Iowa Secretary of State"). Treat primary numbers as a convenience and check the state authority for anything that matters.

Notes the next person would otherwise rediscover:

• The FEC money view omits registrants with no financial summary on file; those appear with financials_on_file: false and null money (null, not zero).
• won_primary is INFERRED, not an id join: the primary table carries no FEC ids, so filers are matched by surname and party, narrowed by given name when several fit. won_primary_match says how (inferred_by_surname_and_party, no_match, ambiguous); when two filers cannot be told apart won_primary is null. null with no match field means no primary table was found.
• incumbent is the sitting officeholder as the FEC flags them, not necessarily someone on the ballot. Read seeking_reelection and incumbent_note: when the FEC classifies every filer as "Open seat" the incumbent is not a candidate.
• One person can hold several FEC candidate ids. race_matchup folds them into one candidate (main row = registration with the latest filing; the rest under other_fec_registrations, money not summed); list_races counts people, not ids.
• FEC lists some candidates' coverage dates in the future; those are shown as null and excluded from data_as_of.
• Large states split their Wikipedia coverage across sub-pages by district range (California); the pack follows the link.
• Ohio and Florida have both a regular and a special Senate election in 2026. FEC groups them under the state; special: true reads the special election's primary page.
• No home addresses or other individual contact details are served.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "us-race-matchups": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/us-race-matchups/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/us-race-matchups/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1858+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/race_matchup \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"state":"IA","office":"house","district":1}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/race_matchup. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-us-race-matchups is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/us-race-matchups/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "us-race-matchups": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-us-race-matchups"]
    }
  }
}

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Us Race Matchups data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT