Grand Rapids, MI political money — 2014 cycle

2014 receipts from Grand Rapids, MI donors

The join keeps donor city Grand Rapids in Michigan and election cycle 2014. The match is $418,494 across 211 itemized contribution rows. The city side of the table, covering every cycle in the aggregate, is $91,070,736. 2014 therefore accounts for 0.46% of Grand Rapids, MI itemized individual dollars in these facts. The remaining $90,652,242 (99.5%) was itemized in other cycles under the same city label.

This is not a restatement of Grand Rapids, MI. That hub mixes 2014 with every other even-year window filed under GRAND RAPIDS. It is also not a restatement of the 2014 election cycle hub, which mixes Grand Rapids, MI with every other donor city in the United States. The 211 rows and $418,494 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. Grand Rapids, MI here is the string that survived aggregation as GRAND RAPIDS in MI. 2014 is a midterm FEC cycle: a two-year window without a presidential general election. That calendar fact does not explain why Grand Rapids, MI donors itemized $418,494. Source: FEC.gov individual contribution aggregates by donor city and election cycle.

The city hub still mixes other cycles

The city aggregate for Grand Rapids, MI is $91,070,736 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 $418,494 from 2014 and the $90,652,242 from every other cycle in the same city file. Michigan campaign-finance pages still mix Grand Rapids with every other city in Michigan.

A large city total does not mean 2014 was large, and a small city total does not mean 2014 was small. For Grand Rapids, MI, the city stack is $91,070,736 while this cycle is $418,494 (0.46%). Use the city hub to see Grand Rapids, MI without a year filter, and use this tie page when the question is specifically Grand Rapids in 2014. Donor city is not the same as recipient city: committees that received these gifts can be anywhere in the FEC system.

How a midterm cycle is coded at the FEC

The 2014 election cycle is a two-year FEC reporting window labeled by its even year. Inside that window, Grand Rapids, MI donors itemized $418,494 on 211 contribution records. Dividing dollars by rows gives a mean of about $1,983 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 2014 hub still includes every other city. State pages for Michigan still include every other cycle. Only this join isolates Grand Rapids × 2014. Unitemized contributions below the FEC itemization threshold are omitted. Independent expenditures, party coordinated spends, and committee-to-committee transfers are other tables. 211 itemized contribution rows is a modest file. A few large receipts can still move the mean without this page listing them. Adjacent pages for Grand Rapids, MI, 2014 election cycle, and Michigan campaign finance keep those broader cuts; this URL is the intersection only.

A thin cut of the Grand Rapids stack

0.46% of $91,070,736 is a thin slice. Most of the Grand Rapids, MI aggregate — $90,652,242 — sits in other cycles. Put another way, about 0.46% of Grand Rapids, MI's itemized individual dollars in this aggregate were filed in 2014, and about 99.5% were not. Those percentages are $418,494 divided by $91,070,736 and $90,652,242 divided by $91,070,736. They are not shares of state totals, national cycle totals, or eligible voters.

Dollar share (0.46%) and row volume (211 itemized gifts) are separate facts. A thin 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 0.46% as Grand Rapids' share of the 2014 national cycle, which is a different denominator and is not in these facts.

211 contribution records from one city-cycle pair

211 itemized contributions totaling $418,494 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 GRAND RAPIDS. Unique-person counts are not in the packet and are not invented here. Neither is a ranking of Grand Rapids versus other Michigan cities: this join has one geography and one cycle.

Mean gift size of about $1,983 uses only the two numbers in the join: $418,494 and 211 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 $418,494 out by occupation, industry, or recipient committee.

Limits of a city-by-cycle table

This page does not rank Grand Rapids against other cities, does not call 2014 a wave, and does not treat itemized giving as a proxy for public opinion in Michigan. Two columns matched. The city of the contributor is not the city of the campaign. A MI address on an individual receipt does not mean the money supported a Michigan candidate.

Unitemized gifts, independent expenditures, and non-individual sources are omitted. See Grand Rapids, MI, the 2014 election cycle, Michigan 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 Grand Rapids, MI donors give in the 2014 election cycle?

FEC itemized individual contributions from donors listing Grand Rapids, MI total $418,494 in the 2014 cycle, across 211 contribution records. The same city label totals $91,070,736 across all cycles in this aggregate, so 2014 is 0.46% of that city stack. Figures are from FEC.gov city-by-cycle aggregates.

Is the Grand Rapids, MI city total only for 2014?

No. The city aggregate of $91,070,736 covers every cycle in the table for GRAND RAPIDS. The 2014 filter is $418,494 from 211 itemized gifts. Other cycles hold $90,652,242. Use the city hub for the all-cycle total and this tie page for the 2014 slice.

Did Grand Rapids, MI 2014 donations stay in Michigan?

Not necessarily. Donor city is Grand Rapids, MI; recipients can be committees anywhere that file with the FEC. This join does not allocate the $418,494 by office, state of the committee, or party. A MI city code is an address field on the individual receipt, not a map of Michigan races.

How many Grand Rapids, MI contributions were itemized in 2014?

211 itemized contribution records sum to $418,494. That count is rows, not unique donors. The arithmetic mean is about $1,983 per row. Unitemized gifts below the FEC threshold and independent expenditures are not included. Citywide unique-donor counts are not in these facts.