ZIP Code 53501
AFTON, WI
Total Donations
$28,403,260
Contributions
125
Unique Donors
0
ZIP 53501 accounts for $28,403,260 in federal contributions across only 125 FEC itemized receipts. LobbyVault sums FEC.gov filings that list 53501 as the contributor ZIP. Afton, Wisconsin, mail uses those five digits, and the receipt pattern is extremely thin for the dollars. Totals can include joint fundraising and PAC addresses, not only residents.
Key figures
- ZIP 53501 FEC itemizations total $28,403,260 across 125 contributions.
- The mean line is about $227,226; the packet has no median or unique-donor count.
- 53501 is a five-digit FEC contributor ZIP, not a resident roster.
- Source: FEC.gov aggregates indexed on LobbyVault.
Nine figures on 125 lines
One hundred twenty-five itemized receipts add to $28,403,260. The mean is about $227,226 per line ($28,403,260 / 125). That is not a household ZIP mean. It is the arithmetic you get when large committee transfers share a small Wisconsin ZIP with almost no personal itemizations. Comparing 53501 with a high-volume residential code without noting the 125-line gap will mislead a reader.
ZIP 53501 is used on Afton-area mail, not on a dense urban grid. FEC filers can list a committee at an address in such a code. LobbyVault does not relabel those rows as non-residential; the ZIP field is whatever the committee reported. The $28,403,260 total therefore follows letterhead as readily as a farm road.
Sparse ZIPs are still public records. They are useful for seeing where committees file. They are a poor proxy for how a township votes or how many people live nearby. Keep those questions out of a ZIP rollup that only contains dollars and a receipt count.
Why a 125-line ZIP distorts town stories
If you treat $28,403,260 as what people in 53501 gave, you invent a neighborhood that the form field does not describe. One hundred twenty-five rows is few enough that the largest lines are easy to inspect. Sort the ZIP 53501 FEC page by amount. A short list of payers likely accounts for most of the total. That is a reading of the table, not a motive claim.
A thin line count is the reason this ZIP does not behave like Park Slope or the Mission. 125 receipts against $28,403,260 is a filing-address pattern until the named rows show otherwise. LobbyVault’s ZIP total follows the ZIP on each itemization it includes. It does not reconstruct the full path of every dollar.
Full analysis: Federal contributions from ZIP 53501 →
Questions
- What is the ZIP 53501 contribution total?
- FEC.gov itemized receipts listing contributor ZIP 53501 total $28,403,260 across 125 contributions in the LobbyVault aggregate. That is a ZIP roll-up of federal Schedule A rows, not a unique-donor count and not a census of Afton residents. Unitemized gifts sit outside it. The mean of about $227,226 is arithmetic from those two packet facts.
- How many FEC contributions are tagged to ZIP 53501?
- LobbyVault counts 125 itemized contributions for ZIP 53501. Repeat gifts and memo entries can add rows without adding new donors. This packet does not publish a unique-donor figure. Those rows are itemized Schedule A lines, not people. The matching dollar total is $28,403,260.
- Does ZIP 53501 include only Afton residents?
- No. The ZIP is the five-digit contributor code on the FEC itemization. Committee addresses in the 53501 grid can be part of $28,403,260 when that is what was filed. LobbyVault does not recode the field into a residential-only book. The 125-line count follows the same rule.
- Where does LobbyVault get ZIP 53501 totals?
- The numbers come from FEC.gov itemized contribution aggregates indexed on LobbyVault: $28,403,260 and 125 lines for ZIP 53501. Original reports remain on FEC.gov. Wisconsin state filings are outside both figures. LobbyVault is the index, not the filing system. If a later extract disagrees, the Commission’s filing controls.
ZIP is the 5-digit contributor ZIP on FEC itemizations. Totals can include joint fundraising and PAC addresses, not only residents.