Atherton, CA political money — 2008 cycle

Reading $183,700 as a two-column match

Headline number: $183,700. Row count: 107. City stack: $124,905,584. Remainder outside 2008: $124,721,884. Share of the city stack: 0.15%. Those five quantities are the join. Everything else on this page is explanation of what those quantities are and are not.

Atherton, CA in 2008 is not Atherton in every year and is not 2008 in every city. Mixing those frames is how a hub restatement sneaks in. The 107 rows exist only at the intersection. Correlation is not causation. An CA city code does not mean the money supported a California candidate.

Atherton is stored as ATHERTON in California; Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and other Peninsula strings are other keys. FEC.gov stores cycle 2008 as a presidential even-year window. Use that label for dating the receipts, not for ranking Atherton against other places. Source: FEC.gov individual contribution aggregates by donor city and election cycle.

Reading $124,905,584 as a city book

The city dimension answers a different question than the join. How much itemized individual money is stored under ATHERTON in CA across years? $124,905,584. How much of that was tagged cycle 2008? $183,700 from 107 receipts. The difference is $124,721,884. Those are stack identities, not rankings.

Atherton is stored as ATHERTON in California; Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and other Peninsula strings are other keys. Suburb spellings, ZIP-only addresses, and firm-city addresses that did not store ATHERTON are excluded from both $124,905,584 and $183,700 as they appear here. Filers type the city. LobbyVault does not recode them. Recipient committees are not required to sit in Atherton.

Itemized rows in Atherton during 2008

Cycle 2008 tagged 107 itemized lines to city ATHERTON in CA for a sum of $183,700. That is the cycle slice. It is a presidential window. It is not a ranking of Atherton among California cities, because this packet has one geography. It is not a ranking of 2008 among Atherton's years beyond the share already stated (0.15% of $124,905,584).

Mean gift size about $1,717 should be quoted with the inputs: $183,700 and 107 rows. Dropping either input turns the mean into an unsourced claim. Employer and occupation strings on those receipts are other joins. This city-cycle page does not break $183,700 out by occupation, industry, or recipient committee.

This URL (/ties/ca-atherton-2008-donations/) is only the Atherton × 2008 intersection. The city hub still mixes every cycle into $124,905,584. The 2008 hub still mixes every donor city. Do not treat either hub as $183,700.

The complement: $124,721,884 outside 2008

The complement of the join inside the city book is $124,721,884 (99.9%). That money is still Atherton, CA; it is just not tagged 2008 in this aggregate. The join itself remains $183,700 / 107 rows / cycle 2008. Keep the complement and the join distinct in citations.

0.15% is not a turnout rate, not a share of California itemized dollars, and not a share of the national 2008 cycle. Those denominators are absent. Use only $124,905,584 when stating the city share.

Recompute the share from the raw integers: 183,700 divided by 124,905,584 is 0.15%. The complement 124,721,884 is $124,721,884, which is 99.9% of the ATHERTON city book. Those identities do not use the row count 107.

Itemization, not a census

What the table includes: itemized individual Schedule A lines with city ATHERTON, state CA, cycle 2008, summing to $183,700 across 107 rows, against a citywide $124,905,584. What it excludes: everything else. That exclusion list is how this page stays a join instead of a hub restatement.

About $1,717 per row should never be quoted as a typical Atherton donor. Typical would need a median and a unique-person file. This extract has neither. 107 rows can be fewer people or, with split spellings, an undercount of a metro — both directions are possible and neither is measured here.

How to cite the pair

Citation template: contributor city Atherton, CA (ATHERTON), election cycle 2008 (presidential), $183,700 on 107 itemized individual contributions, citywide $124,905,584, share 0.15%, remainder $124,721,884, mean about $1,717 per row. Source: FEC.gov via LobbyVault city-cycle aggregates.

Then send the reader to the live Atherton, CA hub, the 2008 election cycle page, California campaign finance, and all FEC ties. If you need employer cuts of Atherton, those are city-industry joins, not this file. This file stays on one city and one cycle.

Questions

How much did Atherton, CA donors give in the 2008 election cycle?

FEC itemized individual contributions from donors listing Atherton, CA total $183,700 in the 2008 cycle, across 107 contribution records. The same city label totals $124,905,584 across all cycles in this aggregate, so 2008 is 0.15% of that city stack. Figures are from FEC.gov city-by-cycle aggregates of itemized individual gifts only.

Is the Atherton, CA city total only for 2008?

No. The city aggregate of $124,905,584 covers every cycle in the table for ATHERTON. The 2008 filter is $183,700 from 107 itemized gifts. Other cycles hold $124,721,884. Use the city hub for the all-cycle total and this tie page for the 2008 slice only. Unitemized gifts are omitted from both totals.

Did Atherton, CA 2008 donations stay in California?

Not necessarily. Donor city is Atherton, CA; recipients can be committees anywhere that file with the FEC. This join does not allocate the $183,700 by office, state of the committee, or party. An CA city code is an address field on the individual receipt, not a map of California races or of where the money was spent.

How many Atherton, CA contributions were itemized in 2008?

107 itemized contribution records sum to $183,700. That count is rows, not unique donors. The arithmetic mean is about $1,717 per row. Unitemized gifts below the FEC threshold and independent expenditures are not included. Citywide unique-donor counts are not in these facts and are not invented here.