Palm Beach, FL political money — 2008 cycle

2008 receipts from Palm Beach, FL donors

The join keeps donor city Palm Beach in Florida and election cycle 2008. The match is $398,192 across 253 itemized contribution rows. The city side of the table, covering every cycle in the aggregate, is $108,657,771. 2008 therefore accounts for 0.4% of Palm Beach, FL itemized individual dollars in these facts. The remaining $108,259,579 (99.6%) was itemized in other cycles under the same city label.

This is not a restatement of Palm Beach, FL. That hub mixes 2008 with every other even-year window filed under PALM BEACH. It is also not a restatement of the 2008 election cycle hub, which mixes Palm Beach, FL with every other donor city in the United States. The 253 rows and $398,192 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. Palm Beach, FL here is the string that survived aggregation as PALM BEACH in FL. 2008 is a presidential FEC cycle: a two-year window that includes a presidential general election. This page does not split the $398,192 by office, party, or candidate. Source: FEC.gov individual contribution aggregates by donor city and election cycle.

The city hub still mixes other cycles

The city aggregate for Palm Beach, FL is $108,657,771 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 $398,192 from 2008 and the $108,259,579 from every other cycle in the same city file. Florida campaign-finance pages still mix Palm Beach with every other city in Florida.

The stored city sits in the Town of Palm Beach in Palm Beach County. West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, and Miami are not rolled into PALM BEACH. WEST PALM BEACH is a different city string. This join is PALM BEACH in FL only. A large city total does not mean 2008 was large, and a small city total does not mean 2008 was small. For Palm Beach, FL, the city stack is $108,657,771 while this cycle is $398,192 (0.4%). Use the city hub to see Palm Beach, FL without a year filter, and use this tie page when the question is specifically Palm Beach in 2008. Donor city is not the same as recipient city: committees that received these gifts can be anywhere in the FEC system.

How a presidential cycle is coded at the FEC

The 2008 election cycle is a two-year FEC reporting window labeled by its even year. Inside that window, Palm Beach, FL donors itemized $398,192 on 253 contribution records. Dividing dollars by rows gives a mean of about $1,574 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 2008 hub still includes every other city. State pages for Florida still include every other cycle. Only this join isolates Palm Beach × 2008. Unitemized contributions below the FEC itemization threshold are omitted. Independent expenditures, party coordinated spends, and committee-to-committee transfers are other tables. 253 itemized rows is a thicker file than many suburb joins, still a receipt count rather than a unique-person census. Repeat givers and office addresses sit in the same 253-line stack. Adjacent pages for Palm Beach, FL, 2008 election cycle, and Florida campaign finance keep those broader cuts; this URL is the intersection only.

A modest cut of the Palm Beach stack

0.4% of $108,657,771 is a modest slice. Most of the Palm Beach, FL aggregate — $108,259,579 — sits in other cycles. Put another way, about 0.4% of Palm Beach, FL's itemized individual dollars in this aggregate were filed in 2008, and about 99.6% were not. Those percentages are $398,192 divided by $108,657,771 and $108,259,579 divided by $108,657,771. They are not shares of state totals, national cycle totals, or eligible voters.

Dollar share (0.4%) and row volume (253 itemized gifts) are separate facts. A modest slice of citywide dollars can sit next to a thicker contribution file than many suburb joins; 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 0.4% as Palm Beach's share of the 2008 national cycle, which is a different denominator and is not in these facts.

Mean gift size is not a typical donor

253 itemized contributions totaling $398,192 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 PALM BEACH. Unique-person counts are not in the packet and are not invented here. Neither is a ranking of Palm Beach versus other Florida cities: this join has one geography and one cycle.

Mean gift size of about $1,574 uses only the two numbers in the join: $398,192 and 253 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 $398,192 out by occupation, industry, or recipient committee. Unitemized gifts and Florida state-office filings sit outside $398,192.

City of the contributor, not the recipient

This page does not rank Palm Beach against other cities, does not call 2008 a wave, and does not treat itemized giving as a proxy for public opinion in Florida. Two columns matched. The city of the contributor is not the city of the campaign. A FL address on an individual receipt does not mean the money supported a Florida candidate. A candidate who lives in Palm Beach can raise money from other cities; those gifts are not this join.

City labels are filer-entered. A donor who typed PALM BEACH is counted; a donor who typed a neighborhood or a nearby suburb such as West Palm Beach is not recoded into Palm Beach. Treat 253 as lines that stored this string in 2008. See Palm Beach, FL, the 2008 election cycle, Florida campaign finance, and All FEC ties for the adjacent tables. Figures are FEC itemized individual contribution aggregates. They are not federal spending awards and they do not fund USAspending totals. If the live hub disagrees, the newer FEC extract controls.

Questions

How much did Palm Beach, FL donors give in the 2008 election cycle?

FEC itemized individual contributions from donors listing Palm Beach, FL total $398,192 in the 2008 cycle, across 253 contribution records. The same city label totals $108,657,771 across all cycles in this aggregate, so 2008 is 0.4% of that city stack. Figures are from FEC.gov city-by-cycle aggregates.

Is the Palm Beach, FL city total only for 2008?

No. The city aggregate of $108,657,771 covers every cycle in the table for PALM BEACH. The 2008 filter is $398,192 from 253 itemized gifts. Other cycles hold $108,259,579. Use the city hub for the all-cycle total and this tie page for the 2008 slice.

Did Palm Beach, FL 2008 donations stay in Florida?

Not necessarily. Donor city is Palm Beach, FL; recipients can be committees anywhere that file with the FEC. This join does not allocate the $398,192 by office, state of the committee, or party. A FL city code is an address field on the individual receipt, not a map of Florida races.

How many Palm Beach, FL contributions were itemized in 2008?

253 itemized contribution records sum to $398,192. That count is rows, not unique donors. The arithmetic mean is about $1,574 per row. Unitemized gifts below the FEC threshold and independent expenditures are not included. Citywide unique-donor counts are not in these facts.