Scott Brown’s Funding
Republican Scott Brown scored a big upset when he won the senate race in Massachusetts to replace the late Teddy Kennedy. I was looking at data about funding sources and thought this would be interesting to visualize. I was surprised by the amount of out of state contributions. It will be interesting to follow Mr. Brown’s progress as we near 2012 and a possible presidential run.
The information is from the Federal Election Committee and shows the itemized contributions which account for just less than 50% of Mr. Brown’s campaign contributions.
John Munoz
Hi Alex,
Nice work, as always.
What do you think about adding an additional slider for contribution amount? I’m guessing the bubbles on the map are sized by amount, if so, it would likely be enlightening to look for differences b/t big donors and small ones.
Cheers,
John C. Munoz
Alex Kerin
Nice idea – had a quick look at the data, but there’s not much variation in the contributions – It looks like they were capped at about $2400.
Jeff Fread
I think if you look at other Congress members (and challengers) it won’t be surprising to see that many get a significant chunk of their funding from outside their districts. It is pretty shocking how much money came in in the last week or two before the election. I wonder how much he was able to spend before the actual election. Some other things that might be interesting in addition to John’s contribution amount:
>> Amount raised per vote (or pre-election per registered voter)
>> Compare funding to opposition’s
>> Serial funders (people who contribute to many campaigns) or a distribution based on how many candidates people have contributed to in the last election cycle
>> Industry affiliation (if available)
Keep up the great work!
Jeff Fread
Alex Kerin
I think comparing it to Martha Coakley’s funding would be the most telling. Of course, this data is only part of the picture – there’s the unitemized funding, which I guess includes candidates own contributions. The employer of the contributer is provided, but not whether they are donating on behalf of the company. While there are recognizable names in there from the big US companies (as you would expect), it would be difficult to see much of a trend without extensive data cleaning.
I would expect that there would be an unusually high contribution from people who work in the healthcare industry who were concerned about reform.
I also wonder if his campaign pot has continued to grow more than usual post-election, due to the possibility of the primary/presidential run.
Alex Kerin
And apologies to AK and HI who are chopped off the map. There were contributions from both of these states. It would be great if Tableau could have a US map base where all the states could easily be shown.
CP
Great work, thanks for taking the time! The energy extended to Brown’s campaign by an energized conservative base earlier tried to work its magic on NY23 and Doug Hoffman. It would be interesting to see a visualization of that election as well. Sorry, my own interests here, but through looking at campaigns for Hoffman, Brown, Djou, Tim Burns (PA12 and visualizing small donor contributions could maybe get a decent look at emergence of national rightroots.