Secretary of State and congressional candidate Chris Nelson has a post up on his Facebook page after getting significantly outraised in the fourth quarter of 2010 by his primary rival Rep. Blake Curd:

"My primary opponent raised more money than I did (I expected that) and the bulk of his funding comes from a handful of large checks. To the hundreds and hundreds of people who have already contributed, I say THANK YOU. Your $25, $50, and $100 checks added up. ..."

What's the truth here? Well, on the Federal Election Commission's site you can view full lists of itemized donations — and, significantly for combing through hundreds of individual donations, download them in a file format we can put into a spreadsheet.

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***Before we continue, a few notes about federal election law. An individual can donate up to $2,400 to a candidate for a given election. The primary election and general election count separately, so you can give up to $4,800 toward a candidate's election — but general election funds can't be used until after the primary election. (I'll revisit this in a moment.) There's no cap based on familial status, so a husband and a wife can each give $2,400 per election or a total of $9,600. Kids can give, too (the Supreme Court struck down a ban in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law on donations from people under 18), as long as they're giving of their own free will and parents aren't just writing a check in their child's name. (This is, I suspect, difficult to enforce.)

If an individual gives $200 or less to a candidate, they don't have to report that person's name, address and other information. These are called "unitemized" donations. Once your gifts go over $200 for a year — like, say, if you write two checks for $150 — then a candidate is supposed to "itemize" your donations and list them all.***

Alright, here we go. Warning: the below is a bit stream-of-consciousness as I worked through the numbers.

I downloaded the fourth quarter donation information for both Nelson and Curd and cued it into a spreadsheet. I removed the in-kind donations to just focus on check-writing (though if you're doing this yourself you can keep them in). I also removed the candidates' donations to themselves, but kept in family donations.

Nelson's report is pretty straightforward. There's 50 itemized donations (where an individual gave more than $200). A simple average formula tells me that Nelson's itemized donors gave an average of $437.05. (In this I combined a couple individuals who gave on more than one occasion.)

Nelson also had $24,154 in unitemized donations, which again are less than $200. That's 45 percent of his total under $200.

Now, Curd's report is a fair bit more complicated. A lot of his donors are listed multiple times, with notes attached to it — "redesignation from primary election", "redisgnation to general election," "reattribution to spouse," "reattribution/redesignation requested." Some of these numbers are negative.

What do all these notes mean? Well, let's take one couple: Daniel and Mary Tynan, of Sioux Falls. Daniel is listed as a surgeon and his wife as a homemaker.

On Dec. 14, Daniel Tynan gave Curd $9,600. That's far above the cap you're allowed to give for one person for one election, but exactly equal how much two people can give for two elections. Then on Dec. 22, there's a lot of notations. $4,800 is reattributed from Daniel Tynan's name to Mary's. $2,400 is redesignated from the primary to the general election, putting Daniel Tynan in compliance. Then under Mary's name $4,800 is added from her spouse and $2,400 is shifted from the primary to the general, putting her in compliance.

One interesting thing: as you scroll through those donations for which reattribution and such was done, almost all of them were done in late December, at the very end of the filing period. A lot of them were made on Dec. 31.

(Note that when I say "interesting," I mean exactly that. I'm not implying this is suspicious, merely that it's a divergence from the expected that I find interesting.)

Anyway, on closer examination, a lot of that just indicates when the Curd campaign did its paperwork. Take a probable relative, Nancy Curd of Texas. On Oct. 13, she wrote two checks for $2,400. One is fine; the other is marked for redesignation. Then on Dec. 12, the redesignation happens, with $2,400 taken out of Nancy Curd's primary election limit and added to the general election limit.

All that's a long, tangential way of saying that Curd's itemized donations won't fall quite as easily into line as Nelson's. After wrangling with Exel for 45 minutes, I'm going to give up and just divide his itemized donation total by his total number of donations. $167,645 divided by his 103 itemized ($200+) donations is $1,627.62. (This is probably not the most accurate figure, so don't cite it without caveats.)

Here's a visual representation.

Curd had $2,436.50 in unitemized (less than $200) donations. That's 1.4 percent of his total individual donations.

Setting aside clerical entries, Curd had 103 itemized ($200+) donations. Nelson had 51.

Looking back to Nelson's statement, was it accurate? He said "the bulk of (Curd's) fundraising comes from a handful of large checks." The truth of that claim comes down to how you define "handful," but Curd raised 98 percent of his money from people donating more than $200, and in that category his average donation is considerably higher. By and large Nelson's claim would see to be true — for what it's worth.

By way of comparison, Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin had $47,574 in itemized donations and $11,440.05 in unitemized donations, which meant 19 percent of her individual donors gave less than $200. Of her itemized donations, the average of her 92 checks was $517.11. Of course, Herseth Sandlin also got more than half her money from political action committees rather than individual donors.

So to sum up, Nelson had the most money in unitemized donations less than $200. Curd had the most money in itemized donations over $200. Herseth Sandlin had the most money from political action committees.

Curiously enough, that's also the order in which they finished in total fundraising.

Now, time for bed.