You know you're a political nerd when you look forward to reading political parties' financial-disclosure forms.

Today, I spent some time examining the NPA and Vision Vancouver documents and came away with the following conclusions:

• The NPA's form is presented in a way that makes it difficult to calculate how much people have given through their companies. There are 11 numbered companies with no directors listed. And all of the donors' contributions are not grouped by name. Instead, they're listed by the date of the contribution. Elections B.C. should order the NPA to present their financial information in a way that makes it easier for voters to understand.

• Vision Vancouver has done an exceptional job of getting a large number of people to contribute monthly dues to the party. Vision Vancouver's list of donations was far more transparent than the NPA's.

• Some of Vision's biggest donors in the past—such as property developers Wall Financial Corporation and Westbank Corp.—gave significantly less money in this election cycle. Each of these firms contributed $15,000, which was far lower than the $125,000 that Macdonald Development Corp. donated to the NPA.

• Holborn Holdings Ltd. ($105,000), Magnum Projects ($75,000), Amacon Management Services Corp. ($75,000) Aquilini Development Corp. ($60,000), Wesgroup Properties ($50,000), MCL Motors ($50,000), and Reliance Properties ($47,650) gave far more money to Vision Vancouver than Rennie Marketing Systems ($26,000), which is headed by Bob Rennie.

• Through his companies and personally, NPA president Peter Armstrong gave $464,100 to his party. That's nearly 18 times as much money as Bob Rennie's company gave to Vision Vancouver.

• A former chair of the Vancouver Art Gallery board, David Aisenstat, must really like Vision Vancouver. The former controlling shareholder of Keg Restaurants is listed as giving a $100,000 personal donation on October 25. He also gave $75,000 to Vision Vancouver on September 25 through the Charles F. White Corporation. Aisenstat's name was attached to another $40,000 in donations to Vision Vancouver from Keg Restaurants. It all adds up to $215,000.

* Dean Alexander gave $41,110 to Vision Vancouver in 23 installments. Three were $10,000 donations and another was a $5,000 gift. There's a Dean Alexander who works at Cypress Capital Management, but the disclosure form doesn't indicate that it's this Dean Alexander who opened his wallet for the party.

• Hootsuite Holdings Inc., which was at the centre of an ill-fated Cedar Party court action against the mayor, only donated $2,000 to Vision Vancouver. That's less than one percent of the amount that came via Aisenstat.

• Joel Solomon's Interdependent Investments Ltd. donated $14,307.98 to Vision Vancouver. Solomon is sometimes portrayed in the media as a Svengali to the mayor, but his contribution was far lower than what came from other Vision donors.

• A day before the election, the NPA recorded a $65,000 donation from Macdonald Development Corporation, headed by former NPA vice president Rob Macdonald. On the same day, the party recorded a $23,750 contribution from Peter Armstrong and a $15,000 gift from the Vancouver Taxi Association.

• A day before the election, Vision Vancouver recorded a $25,000 donation from Don Docksteader Motors and a $10,000 donation from the union representing operating engineers.

• Fraser Institute director Hassan Khosrowshahi and his wife Nezhat are linked to at least $90,000 in donations to the NPA either personally or through various companies (Persis Holdings, Wesbild, Hunterhorn Holdings, Inwest Investments, and Burke Mountain Limited Partnership). These companies all share the same business address, according to the NPA disclosure form.

• The NPA had $228,000 in unspent money after the campaign.

• By the end of the year, Vision Vancouver had a deficit of $388,415.72.

• Vision Vancouver raised $2.92 million compared to $2.46 million raised by the NPA.

• Unions donated $360, 270 to Vision Vancouver, amounting to 12 percent of overall contributions. The NPA only generated $3,000 from unions, which is pretty close to zero percent of its donations.

• NPA candidates each transferred $1,000 to the party, which is significantly less than in previous elections. Among those who made these transfers were former NPA school trustees Ken Denike and Sophia Woo, who were subsequently expelled from caucus.

• Noncandidates such as D. Chesman, Howard Blank, S. Lucks, T. Philps, M. Greenwood, and G. Atkins were included in the NPA list of transfers of $1,000 from candidates.