Lake Forest, IL political money — 2012 cycle

2012 receipts from Lake Forest, IL donors

The join keeps donor city Lake Forest in Illinois and election cycle 2012. The match is $374,443 across 130 itemized contribution rows. The city side of the table, covering every cycle in the aggregate, is $157,374,022. 2012 therefore accounts for 0.2% of Lake Forest, IL itemized individual dollars in these facts. The remaining $156,999,579 (99.8%) was itemized in other cycles under the same city label.

This is not a restatement of Lake Forest, IL. That hub mixes 2012 with every other even-year window filed under LAKE FOREST. It is also not a restatement of the 2012 election cycle hub, which mixes Lake Forest, IL with every other donor city in the United States. The 130 rows and $374,443 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. Lake Forest, IL here is the string that survived aggregation as LAKE FOREST in IL. 2012 is a presidential FEC cycle: a two-year window that includes a presidential general election. This page does not split the $374,443 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 Lake Forest, IL is $157,374,022 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 $374,443 from 2012 and the $156,999,579 from every other cycle in the same city file. Illinois campaign-finance pages still mix Lake Forest with every other city in Illinois.

The stored city sits in a North Shore city in Lake County. Chicago, Highland Park, and Lake Forest, California are not rolled into LAKE FOREST. State IL stays on the citation so Lake Forest, Illinois is not merged with Lake Forest, California. A large city total does not mean 2012 was large, and a small city total does not mean 2012 was small. For Lake Forest, IL, the city stack is $157,374,022 while this cycle is $374,443 (0.2%). Use the city hub to see Lake Forest, IL without a year filter, and use this tie page when the question is specifically Lake Forest in 2012. 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 2012 election cycle is a two-year FEC reporting window labeled by its even year. Inside that window, Lake Forest, IL donors itemized $374,443 on 130 contribution records. Dividing dollars by rows gives a mean of about $2,880 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 Illinois still include every other cycle. Only this join isolates Lake Forest × 2012. Unitemized contributions below the FEC itemization threshold are omitted. Independent expenditures, party coordinated spends, and committee-to-committee transfers are other tables. 130 itemized rows is a modest file for a named city. A handful of large receipts can still move $374,443 without proving a wide unique-donor pool. Adjacent pages for Lake Forest, IL, 2012 election cycle, and Illinois campaign finance keep those broader cuts; this URL is the intersection only.

A modest cut of the Lake Forest stack

0.2% of $157,374,022 is a modest slice. Most of the Lake Forest, IL aggregate — $156,999,579 — sits in other cycles. Put another way, about 0.2% of Lake Forest, IL's itemized individual dollars in this aggregate were filed in 2012, and about 99.8% were not. Those percentages are $374,443 divided by $157,374,022 and $156,999,579 divided by $157,374,022. They are not shares of state totals, national cycle totals, or eligible voters.

Dollar share (0.2%) and row volume (130 itemized gifts) are separate facts. A modest slice of citywide dollars can sit next to a modest 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 0.2% as Lake Forest's share of the 2012 national cycle, which is a different denominator and is not in these facts.

Mean gift size is not a typical donor

130 itemized contributions totaling $374,443 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 LAKE FOREST. Unique-person counts are not in the packet and are not invented here. Neither is a ranking of Lake Forest versus other Illinois cities: this join has one geography and one cycle.

Mean gift size of about $2,880 uses only the two numbers in the join: $374,443 and 130 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 $374,443 out by occupation, industry, or recipient committee. Unitemized gifts and Illinois state-office filings sit outside $374,443.

City of the contributor, not the recipient

This page does not rank Lake Forest against other cities, does not call 2012 a wave, and does not treat itemized giving as a proxy for public opinion in Illinois. Two columns matched. The city of the contributor is not the city of the campaign. A IL address on an individual receipt does not mean the money supported a Illinois candidate. A candidate who lives in Lake Forest can raise money from other cities; those gifts are not this join.

City labels are filer-entered. A donor who typed LAKE FOREST is counted; a donor who typed a neighborhood or a nearby suburb such as Chicago is not recoded into Lake Forest. Treat 130 as lines that stored this string in 2012. See Lake Forest, IL, the 2012 election cycle, Illinois 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 Lake Forest, IL donors give in the 2012 election cycle?

FEC itemized individual contributions from donors listing Lake Forest, IL total $374,443 in the 2012 cycle, across 130 contribution records. The same city label totals $157,374,022 across all cycles in this aggregate, so 2012 is 0.2% of that city stack. Figures are from FEC.gov city-by-cycle aggregates.

Is the Lake Forest, IL city total only for 2012?

No. The city aggregate of $157,374,022 covers every cycle in the table for LAKE FOREST. The 2012 filter is $374,443 from 130 itemized gifts. Other cycles hold $156,999,579. Use the city hub for the all-cycle total and this tie page for the 2012 slice.

Did Lake Forest, IL 2012 donations stay in Illinois?

Not necessarily. Donor city is Lake Forest, IL; recipients can be committees anywhere that file with the FEC. This join does not allocate the $374,443 by office, state of the committee, or party. A IL city code is an address field on the individual receipt, not a map of Illinois races.

How many Lake Forest, IL contributions were itemized in 2012?

130 itemized contribution records sum to $374,443. That count is rows, not unique donors. The arithmetic mean is about $2,880 per row. Unitemized gifts below the FEC threshold and independent expenditures are not included. Citywide unique-donor counts are not in these facts.