Richmond, VA political money — 2012 cycle

2012 receipts from Richmond, VA donors

The join keeps donor city Richmond in Virginia and election cycle 2012. The match is $402,760 across 159 itemized contribution rows. The city side of the table, covering every cycle in the aggregate, is $89,411,164. 2012 therefore accounts for 0.5% of Richmond, VA itemized individual dollars in these facts. The remaining $89,008,404 (99.5%) was itemized in other cycles under the same city label.

This is not a restatement of Richmond, VA. That hub mixes 2012 with every other even-year window filed under RICHMOND. It is also not a restatement of the 2012 election cycle hub, which mixes Richmond, VA with every other donor city in the United States. The 159 rows and $402,760 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. Richmond, VA here is the string that survived aggregation as RICHMOND in VA. 2012 is a presidential FEC cycle: a two-year window that includes a presidential general election. This page does not split the $402,760 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 Richmond, VA is $89,411,164 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 $402,760 from 2012 and the $89,008,404 from every other cycle in the same city file. Virginia campaign-finance pages still mix Richmond with every other city in Virginia.

The stored city sits in an independent city in Virginia. Henrico County, Chesterfield County, and Richmond, California are not rolled into RICHMOND. State VA stays on the citation so Richmond, Virginia is not merged with Richmond, California. A large city total does not mean 2012 was large, and a small city total does not mean 2012 was small. For Richmond, VA, the city stack is $89,411,164 while this cycle is $402,760 (0.5%). Use the city hub to see Richmond, VA without a year filter, and use this tie page when the question is specifically Richmond 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, Richmond, VA donors itemized $402,760 on 159 contribution records. Dividing dollars by rows gives a mean of about $2,533 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 Virginia still include every other cycle. Only this join isolates Richmond × 2012. Unitemized contributions below the FEC itemization threshold are omitted. Independent expenditures, party coordinated spends, and committee-to-committee transfers are other tables. 159 itemized rows is a modest file for a named city. A handful of large receipts can still move $402,760 without proving a wide unique-donor pool. Adjacent pages for Richmond, VA, 2012 election cycle, and Virginia campaign finance keep those broader cuts; this URL is the intersection only.

A modest cut of the Richmond stack

0.5% of $89,411,164 is a modest slice. Most of the Richmond, VA aggregate — $89,008,404 — sits in other cycles. Put another way, about 0.5% of Richmond, VA's itemized individual dollars in this aggregate were filed in 2012, and about 99.5% were not. Those percentages are $402,760 divided by $89,411,164 and $89,008,404 divided by $89,411,164. They are not shares of state totals, national cycle totals, or eligible voters.

Dollar share (0.5%) and row volume (159 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 0.5% as Richmond'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

159 itemized contributions totaling $402,760 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 RICHMOND. Unique-person counts are not in the packet and are not invented here. Neither is a ranking of Richmond versus other Virginia cities: this join has one geography and one cycle.

Mean gift size of about $2,533 uses only the two numbers in the join: $402,760 and 159 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 $402,760 out by occupation, industry, or recipient committee. Unitemized gifts and Virginia state-office filings sit outside $402,760.

City of the contributor, not the recipient

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

City labels are filer-entered. A donor who typed RICHMOND is counted; a donor who typed a neighborhood or a nearby suburb such as Henrico is not recoded into Richmond. Treat 159 as lines that stored this string in 2012. See Richmond, VA, the 2012 election cycle, Virginia 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 Richmond, VA donors give in the 2012 election cycle?

FEC itemized individual contributions from donors listing Richmond, VA total $402,760 in the 2012 cycle, across 159 contribution records. The same city label totals $89,411,164 across all cycles in this aggregate, so 2012 is 0.5% of that city stack. Figures are from FEC.gov city-by-cycle aggregates.

Is the Richmond, VA city total only for 2012?

No. The city aggregate of $89,411,164 covers every cycle in the table for RICHMOND. The 2012 filter is $402,760 from 159 itemized gifts. Other cycles hold $89,008,404. Use the city hub for the all-cycle total and this tie page for the 2012 slice.

Did Richmond, VA 2012 donations stay in Virginia?

Not necessarily. Donor city is Richmond, VA; recipients can be committees anywhere that file with the FEC. This join does not allocate the $402,760 by office, state of the committee, or party. A VA city code is an address field on the individual receipt, not a map of Virginia races.

How many Richmond, VA contributions were itemized in 2012?

159 itemized contribution records sum to $402,760. That count is rows, not unique donors. The arithmetic mean is about $2,533 per row. Unitemized gifts below the FEC threshold and independent expenditures are not included. Citywide unique-donor counts are not in these facts.