Cambridge, MA political money — 2012 cycle

2012 receipts from Cambridge, MA donors

The join keeps donor city Cambridge in Massachusetts and election cycle 2012. The match is $368,924 across 301 itemized contribution rows. The city side of the table, covering every cycle in the aggregate, is $147,227,540. 2012 therefore accounts for 0.3% of Cambridge, MA itemized individual dollars in these facts. The remaining $146,858,616 (99.7%) was itemized in other cycles under the same city label.

This is not a restatement of Cambridge, MA. That hub mixes 2012 with every other even-year window filed under CAMBRIDGE. It is also not a restatement of the 2012 election cycle hub, which mixes Cambridge, MA with every other donor city in the United States. The 301 rows and $368,924 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. Cambridge, MA here is the string that survived aggregation as CAMBRIDGE in MA. 2012 is a presidential FEC cycle: a two-year window that includes a presidential general election. This page does not split the $368,924 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 Cambridge, MA is $147,227,540 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 $368,924 from 2012 and the $146,858,616 from every other cycle in the same city file. Massachusetts campaign-finance pages still mix Cambridge with every other city in Massachusetts.

The stored city sits in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Boston, Somerville, and Cambridge, Maryland are not rolled into CAMBRIDGE. State MA stays on the citation so Cambridge, Massachusetts is not merged with Cambridge, Maryland. A large city total does not mean 2012 was large, and a small city total does not mean 2012 was small. For Cambridge, MA, the city stack is $147,227,540 while this cycle is $368,924 (0.3%). Use the city hub to see Cambridge, MA without a year filter, and use this tie page when the question is specifically Cambridge 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, Cambridge, MA donors itemized $368,924 on 301 contribution records. Dividing dollars by rows gives a mean of about $1,226 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 Massachusetts still include every other cycle. Only this join isolates Cambridge × 2012. Unitemized contributions below the FEC itemization threshold are omitted. Independent expenditures, party coordinated spends, and committee-to-committee transfers are other tables. 301 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 301-line stack. Adjacent pages for Cambridge, MA, 2012 election cycle, and Massachusetts campaign finance keep those broader cuts; this URL is the intersection only.

A modest cut of the Cambridge stack

0.3% of $147,227,540 is a modest slice. Most of the Cambridge, MA aggregate — $146,858,616 — sits in other cycles. Put another way, about 0.3% of Cambridge, MA's itemized individual dollars in this aggregate were filed in 2012, and about 99.7% were not. Those percentages are $368,924 divided by $147,227,540 and $146,858,616 divided by $147,227,540. They are not shares of state totals, national cycle totals, or eligible voters.

Dollar share (0.3%) and row volume (301 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 0.3% as Cambridge'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

301 itemized contributions totaling $368,924 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 CAMBRIDGE. Unique-person counts are not in the packet and are not invented here. Neither is a ranking of Cambridge versus other Massachusetts cities: this join has one geography and one cycle.

Mean gift size of about $1,226 uses only the two numbers in the join: $368,924 and 301 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 $368,924 out by occupation, industry, or recipient committee. Unitemized gifts and Massachusetts state-office filings sit outside $368,924.

City of the contributor, not the recipient

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

City labels are filer-entered. A donor who typed CAMBRIDGE is counted; a donor who typed a neighborhood or a nearby suburb such as Boston is not recoded into Cambridge. Treat 301 as lines that stored this string in 2012. See Cambridge, MA, the 2012 election cycle, Massachusetts 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 Cambridge, MA donors give in the 2012 election cycle?

FEC itemized individual contributions from donors listing Cambridge, MA total $368,924 in the 2012 cycle, across 301 contribution records. The same city label totals $147,227,540 across all cycles in this aggregate, so 2012 is 0.3% of that city stack. Figures are from FEC.gov city-by-cycle aggregates.

Is the Cambridge, MA city total only for 2012?

No. The city aggregate of $147,227,540 covers every cycle in the table for CAMBRIDGE. The 2012 filter is $368,924 from 301 itemized gifts. Other cycles hold $146,858,616. Use the city hub for the all-cycle total and this tie page for the 2012 slice.

Did Cambridge, MA 2012 donations stay in Massachusetts?

Not necessarily. Donor city is Cambridge, MA; recipients can be committees anywhere that file with the FEC. This join does not allocate the $368,924 by office, state of the committee, or party. A MA city code is an address field on the individual receipt, not a map of Massachusetts races.

How many Cambridge, MA contributions were itemized in 2012?

301 itemized contribution records sum to $368,924. That count is rows, not unique donors. The arithmetic mean is about $1,226 per row. Unitemized gifts below the FEC threshold and independent expenditures are not included. Citywide unique-donor counts are not in these facts.