Los Angeles, CA political money — 2012 cycle

Los Angeles, CA political money in 2012

The join keeps donor city Los Angeles in California and election cycle 2012. The match is $2,773,190 across 2,023 itemized contribution rows. The city side of the table, covering every cycle in the aggregate, is $1,057,916,195. 2012 therefore accounts for 0.26% of Los Angeles, CA itemized individual dollars in these facts. The remaining $1,055,143,005 (99.7%) was itemized in other cycles under the same city label.

This is not a restatement of Los Angeles, CA. That hub mixes 2012 with every other even-year window filed under LOS ANGELES. It is also not a restatement of the 2012 election cycle hub, which mixes Los Angeles, CA with every other donor city in the United States. The 2,023 rows and $2,773,190 exist only where both filters are true. Correlation is not causation: a city code plus a cycle year does not prove why someone gave, whom they supported, or whether the recipient was local.

FEC individual contribution files record the contributor's city as entered on the itemized receipt. Spellings, abbreviations, and suburb-versus-city choices can split a metro across multiple city pages. Los Angeles, CA here is the string that survived aggregation as LOS ANGELES in CA. 2012 is a presidential FEC cycle: a two-year window that includes a presidential general election. This page does not split the $2,773,190 by office, party, or candidate. Source: FEC.gov individual contribution aggregates by donor city and election cycle.

Reading the Los Angeles city aggregate

The city aggregate for Los Angeles, CA is $1,057,916,195 in itemized individual contributions. That figure is the running total for this city label across cycles, not a single-year census and not a count of unique residents. It includes the $2,773,190 from 2012 and the $1,055,143,005 from every other cycle in the same city file. California campaign-finance pages still mix Los Angeles with every other city in California.

A large city total does not mean 2012 was large, and a small city total does not mean 2012 was small. For Los Angeles, CA, the city stack is $1,057,916,195 while this cycle is $2,773,190 (0.26%). Use the city hub to see Los Angeles, CA without a year filter, and use this tie page when the question is specifically Los Angeles in 2012. Donor city is not the same as recipient city: committees that received these gifts can be anywhere in the FEC system.

Reading the 2012 election-cycle filter

The 2012 election cycle is a two-year FEC reporting window labeled by its even year. Inside that window, Los Angeles, CA donors itemized $2,773,190 on 2,023 contribution records. Dividing dollars by rows gives a mean of about $1,371 per itemized gift. That mean is an arithmetic average of rows, not a typical donor and not a median. A few large receipts can lift the mean while most rows sit far below it. This page does not publish a median or a unique-donor count.

The national 2012 hub still includes every other city. State pages for California still include every other cycle. Only this join isolates Los Angeles × 2012. Unitemized contributions below the FEC itemization threshold are omitted. Independent expenditures, party coordinated spends, and committee-to-committee transfers are other tables. 2,023 itemized contribution rows is a dense file for a single city-cycle pair. That count is still not unique donors: one person can appear on many rows. Adjacent pages for Los Angeles, CA, 2012 election cycle, and California campaign finance keep those broader cuts; this URL is the intersection only.

2012 versus the rest of Los Angeles

0.26% of $1,057,916,195 is a thin slice. Los Angeles, CA remains a large multi-cycle file; 2012 is one filter on that stack. Put another way, about 0.26% of Los Angeles, CA's itemized individual dollars in this aggregate were filed in 2012, and about 99.7% were not. Those percentages are $2,773,190 divided by $1,057,916,195 and $1,055,143,005 divided by $1,057,916,195. They are not shares of state totals, national cycle totals, or eligible voters.

Dollar share (0.26%) and row volume (2,023 itemized gifts) are separate facts. A thin slice of citywide dollars can sit next to a dense contribution file; those labels describe this pair, not other cities. This packet does not include a citywide row count across all cycles, so a row-share percentage is not computed. Do not treat 0.26% as Los Angeles's share of the 2012 national cycle, which is a different denominator and is not in these facts.

Counts, dollars, and what they omit

2,023 itemized contributions totaling $2,773,190 is the operational definition of this page. The FEC file can list the same household on multiple dates, to multiple committees, and under spelling variants of LOS ANGELES. Unique-person counts are not in the packet and are not invented here. Neither is a ranking of Los Angeles versus other California cities: this join has one geography and one cycle.

Mean gift size of about $1,371 uses only the two numbers in the join: $2,773,190 and 2,023 rows. It is a trivial ratio, not a finding about wealth, turnout, or ideology. Employer and occupation strings on those receipts are other joins. This city-cycle page does not break the $2,773,190 out by occupation, industry, or recipient committee.

Caveats on a geographic-cycle join

This page does not rank Los Angeles against other cities, does not call 2012 a wave, and does not treat itemized giving as a proxy for public opinion in California. Two columns matched. The city of the contributor is not the city of the campaign. A CA address on an individual receipt does not mean the money supported a California candidate.

Unitemized gifts, independent expenditures, and non-individual sources are omitted. See Los Angeles, CA, the 2012 election cycle, California campaign finance, and all FEC ties for the adjacent tables. Dollar figures are FEC itemized individual contribution aggregates. They are not federal spending awards and they do not fund USAspending totals. Source: FEC.gov.

Questions

How much did Los Angeles, CA donors give in the 2012 election cycle?

FEC itemized individual contributions from donors listing Los Angeles, CA total $2,773,190 in the 2012 cycle, across 2,023 contribution records. The same city label totals $1,057,916,195 across all cycles in this aggregate, so 2012 is 0.26% of that city stack. Figures are from FEC.gov city-by-cycle aggregates.

Is the Los Angeles, CA city total only for 2012?

No. The city aggregate of $1,057,916,195 covers every cycle in the table for LOS ANGELES. The 2012 filter is $2,773,190 from 2,023 itemized gifts. Other cycles hold $1,055,143,005. Use the city hub for the all-cycle total and this tie page for the 2012 slice.

Did Los Angeles, CA 2012 donations stay in California?

Not necessarily. Donor city is Los Angeles, CA; recipients can be committees anywhere that file with the FEC. This join does not allocate the $2,773,190 by office, state of the committee, or party. A CA city code is an address field on the individual receipt, not a map of California races.

How many Los Angeles, CA contributions were itemized in 2012?

2,023 itemized contribution records sum to $2,773,190. That count is rows, not unique donors. The arithmetic mean is about $1,371 per row. Unitemized gifts below the FEC threshold and independent expenditures are not included. Citywide unique-donor counts are not in these facts.