What retail donors give in federal races

A sector word used as a job title under $5.0M

$5,030,135 is the occupation-level dollar total. 41,084 is the itemization count. 1,213 is the donor-record count. Dividing dollars by lines yields about $122 per contribution. Dividing by donors yields about $4,147 per donor record. The repeat rate is about 34 itemizations per donor record.

41,084 lines from 1,213 records is a high-repeat pattern for a one-word label. The per-line mean of about $122 is modest: dollars accumulated in many schedules. Those means are arithmetic, not medians. The packet has no gift-size distribution and no party split.

RETAIL as occupation is not the same unit as a retail industry page. People who typed RETAIL may be clerks, owners, buyers, or anyone who used the sector word as a job description. The occupation column does not say which.

Retail is not retail owner and not store manager

RETAIL OWNER, STORE MANAGER, and RETAILER — if those strings exist as separate keys — are not rolled into this total unless the bulk extract normalized them to RETAIL. This page cites only $5,030,135, 41,084 contributions, and 1,213 donors.

FEC Form 3 and Form 3X collect occupation as free text on itemized Schedule A. FEC.gov publishes what committees reported. There is no NAICS check on the occupation field. LobbyVault groups rows whose occupation field equals RETAIL after indexing. SALES remains another occupation page unless it normalized here.

What 1,213 donor records cannot show

1,213 donor records used RETAIL on at least one matching itemization. That is not a census of retail workers. Retired staff, owners who abbreviated their title to RETAIL, and forms filled with a spouse’s job can appear. Address variants can split one human into more than one donor record.

A person who listed RETAIL on some gifts and RETAILER on others will appear in both occupation totals for the respective lines. Occupation is stored per transaction. The 34-line repeat rate is a property of matching text, not proof that 1,213 unique people each gave 34 times.

Do not add occupation RETAIL to industry RETAIL

Industry pages group employer-side categories. Adding $5,030,135 to a retail industry total mixes an occupation string with employer categories and double-counts overlapping itemizations. Use one filter at a time unless you are tracing a single row.

Open the RETAIL occupation page for the indexed line list. Use the occupations index to place this string next to neighboring labels. Independent expenditures are not contributions and are not inside $5,030,135.

How to cite RETAIL as FEC occupation text

A usable public-record citation names the exact string: RETAIL itemizations in FEC bulk data indexed on LobbyVault sum to $5,030,135 on 41,084 contributions from 1,213 donor records. Add that the figure is itemized occupation money and that RETAIL is one-word free text. Unitemized receipts never carry an occupation code, so they never enter the total.

Source: FEC Form 3/3X schedules published on FEC.gov. The facts do not encode party or store type. Recipient committees are a different join. Compact millions ($5.0M) are the same headline amount as $5,030,135, rounded to one decimal place.

RETAIL as a one-word occupation string

RETAIL in this extract is $5,030,135 on 41,084 itemizations from 1,213 donor records, or $5.0M in compact millions. Those dollars are itemized activity on FEC Form 3 and Form 3X schedules indexed on LobbyVault from FEC.gov bulk data. Unitemized receipts never carry an occupation code, so they never enter the total. Refunds and memo entries follow FEC presentation in the underlying schedules; this guide does not invent a fourth occupation-level fact.

Arithmetic means on this key are about $122 per contribution and about $4,147 per donor record, with roughly 34 itemizations per donor record. Means are not medians. RETAILER and STORE MANAGER remain other occupation pages unless the extract normalized them to RETAIL. Combining those keys without naming each source total changes the unit from one FEC string to a homemade cluster.

Industry pages group employer-side categories and should not be added to $5,030,135. A public-record citation that stays inside the packet is: occupation equals RETAIL, dollars equal $5,030,135, contributions equal 41,084, donors equal 1,213. Candidate and committee pages hold the recipient side. LobbyVault does not infer motive from the occupation column.

Researchers who need cycle cuts, employer text, or recipient lists should leave this guide and open the live occupation hub. This file restates harvested packet facts only. Keep the contribution count and the donor-record count in any sentence that quotes the dollars, so readers can see the high-frequency shape of RETAIL. Exact-string matching is the method. Anything else is a different query.

Questions

How much have RETAIL occupation donors given in FEC records?

Itemizations that list RETAIL as occupation sum to $5,030,135, or $5.0M, across 41,084 contributions and 1,213 donor records in the LobbyVault index of FEC bulk data. RETAIL is a one-word occupation string, not an industry total. Occupation is self-reported free text on FEC Form 3 and Form 3X schedules. Unitemized receipts never enter this occupation total.

Is this the same as retail industry spending?

No. Industry pages group employers. This page covers occupation equals RETAIL: $5,030,135, 41,084 contributions, and 1,213 donors. Adding the two would double-count overlapping itemizations. Occupation is donor-typed on Form 3 and Form 3X. LobbyVault indexes exact strings from FEC.gov bulk data.

Does RETAIL mean store owner or clerk?

The FEC record does not say. RETAIL is one-word free text. Treat the 1,213 donor records as a count of matching text, not a job-classification roster. The indexed sum remains $5,030,135. Cite the three packet facts with the exact occupation string. Source: FEC.gov Form 3/3X itemizations indexed on LobbyVault.

Where do I review individual RETAIL occupation gifts?

The RETAIL occupation page lists indexed itemizations. Verify amounts on FEC.gov. The occupation total is $5,030,135. Confirm surprising amounts on the committee report at FEC.gov. Occupation matching is exact-string only. Unitemized receipts never enter this occupation total. Industry pages group employers, not this occupation string.