How totals are counted

Campaign finance and lobbying filings report different things over different periods. Money given to a committee, money a committee spends around a candidate, and money an organization pays a lobbying firm can't be added into one figure without counting some dollars twice or mixing things that aren't alike. So the map keeps every figure as the reported record it came from.

Reported receipts

A committee's reported receipts are the total contributions it received in the calendar year, from the Summary Page of its latest included campaign statement (Form 460). They run through the end of that statement's period, shown as the coverage date.

• They are not cash on hand, and they don't subtract spending.
• Money received after the statement period isn't in them.
• A candidate's or measure's receipts figure comes from the committees whose filings name it, and those committees can be on either side.

Itemized givers are inside receipts

A committee's statement names its larger givers one by one. These are the committee's givers and the entries in the donor index. Their amounts explain the committee's receipts; they are not money on top of them.

On the map, a committee's itemized givers of $5,000 or more are drawn as records of their own and its smaller itemized givers as one record together, so every itemized dollar runs from a drawn source. Money that isn't itemized, such as small contributions, is counted as not itemized by giver, and the committee's record says how much of its total that is.

Late contributions can overlap

Close to an election, committees report large contributions within days on a late contribution report (Form 497). The same contribution is then reported again on the committee's next full statement. So a late contribution can overlap a receipts total, and the map doesn't add the two. Later contributions are checked against each committee's statement period to avoid counting the same money twice.

Independent spending is not received

Independent expenditures (Form 496) are money a committee spends on its own to support or oppose a candidate or measure. The map shows them as spent for or spent against, never as money the candidate or measure received, and keeps support and opposition apart.

Lobbying payments are not bill spending

A lobbying payment is what an organization paid a lobbying firm over the reporting window. The filings don't say how much of a payment went to any bill, position, lawmaker or outcome, so the map never presents a payment that way. A bill has no filed dollar figure of its own.

The one exception is a labelled estimate of the lobbying money associated with a bill, always marked with an asterisk and described in Method. It is a calculation, not a filed figure.

Positions carry no money

A position on a bill records that an organization supported or opposed it. It has no amount, and a count of supporters is not a measure of money or influence.