When you land on a candidate page on LobbyVault, you see five or six sections of numbers: total receipts, total disbursements, cash on hand, individual contributions, PAC contributions, and a list of donors. Each section is drawn from a different FEC table, and each tells part of a larger story. This post walks through what every line actually means, so the numbers stop being a wall of currency and start being a window into how the campaign is running.
The Candidate vs. the Committee
First distinction: the candidate and their principal committee are not the same thing in FEC parlance. A candidate (cand_id) is an individual who has filed a Form 2 Statement of Candidacy. Their principal committee (cmte_id) is the registered entity that actually collects and spends the money, usually something like "JANE DOE FOR CONGRESS".
All the financial numbers on a candidate page come from the committee, not the candidate. Most candidates have one principal committee; some have a joint fundraising committee in addition, which complicates the totals (see below).
Total Receipts
This is the top line. total_receipts in the FEC candidate summary file is the sum of all money flowing into the committee over the cycle, including:
- Itemized individual contributions (over $200 per donor per cycle)
- Unitemized individual contributions (under $200)
- PAC contributions
- Party contributions
- Candidate self-loans
- Transfers from other committees (often the joint fundraising committee)
- Refunds returned to the committee
It is not the same as "money raised from donors" — self-loans can inflate it significantly for self-funding candidates, and you have to subtract out the loans line to get the organic fundraising figure.
Total Disbursements
Mirror image of receipts. total_disbursements captures every dollar the committee spent, including:
- Operating expenditures (salaries, rent, polling, media buys)
- Contributions to other candidates and committees
- Loan repayments (including repayment of candidate self-loans)
- Transfers out
- Refunds to donors
The disbursements figure can be misleading for large self-funders: when a candidate loans themselves $5 million and the campaign repays $3 million of that loan, the $3 million counts as a disbursement but is just the candidate getting their own money back.
Cash on Hand
cash_on_hand is the balance at the end of the most recent reporting period. It is the single most useful number for gauging whether a campaign has runway.
Context matters: a House challenger with $200,000 cash on hand three weeks before an election is in a strong closing position. A sitting senator with the same $200,000 is struggling. Always compare cash-on-hand to the race's demonstrated cost-of-contest.
Individual Contributions
The individual_contributions line is the share of receipts that came from human donors, itemized or unitemized. This is the figure to watch for grassroots strength:
- A high share from individual contributions signals a broad donor base.
- A high share of that share from unitemized (sub-$200) contributions signals genuine small-dollar momentum.
- A high share from itemized (>$200) contributions signals a more traditional high-dollar operation.
LobbyVault surfaces these splits when the data is available.
PAC Contributions
pac_contributions captures the share from political action committees. Because traditional PAC contributions are capped at $5,000 per candidate per election (and $10,000 per cycle if both primary and general), a $500,000 PAC receipts total means the candidate has meaningful support from at least ~50 distinct PACs — usually an industry or labor coalition.
If you see a candidate with near-zero PAC receipts, that is almost always a deliberate choice (some candidates refuse PAC money on principle) rather than an inability to attract it.
Joint Fundraising Committees Break the Math
When a candidate participates in a joint fundraising committee (JFC) — common in presidential and Senate races — donors can write a single large check that the JFC then splits among several participating committees, up to each committee's contribution limit.
In the raw FEC data, the full check appears as a contribution to the JFC, and the split amounts appear as transfers from the JFC to each participating committee. If you sum both sides, you double-count. For clean candidate-level numbers, subtract transfers-in from other affiliated committees.
The candidate summary file usually handles this correctly, but it is worth flagging because any manually constructed query that joins fec_individual_contribution directly to a candidate will over-count for JFC-heavy operations.
Outside Spending
A candidate page should also show outside spending — money that helps or hurts the candidate without going through the campaign. This comes from a different table (fec_independent_expenditure) and is not in the candidate summary receipts or disbursements.
In modern high-profile races, outside spending often exceeds the candidate's own spending. A page that shows $5M raised by the candidate and $40M in IE opposing them is a completely different race than one that shows the same $5M with no outside activity.
A Quick Reading Checklist
When you land on a candidate detail page, ask in order:
- What's the cash on hand going into the final stretch?
- What share of receipts are individual contributions vs. PAC vs. self-loans?
- What does the time-series of receipts look like — smooth or spiky?
- What is independent expenditure activity for and against?
- Who are the top donors, and do they cluster around a particular employer or industry?
That five-question scan usually tells you what kind of campaign you're looking at.
Further Reading
Once you've read a dozen candidate pages with this framework, the numbers stop being a wall and start being a story.