Just 3% of San Francisco Donors Chose Trump – The Bay is With Her

With just a week to go in this election cycle the only thing left to do is vote (seriously, get out and vote!). As Hillary and the Donald go pantsuit to “hair”, we’ve been left with a hunger for some cold hard data and in the final FEC disclosure of the season, we found just that. As a data-driven real estate startup, RentHop recognizes the magnitude of the situation. Not only will renters and brokers be affected, but as half the country simultaneously moves to Canada, rent prices may finally decrease! We feel it is our duty to lend some of our data science muscle and weigh in on this nightmare.

Use the map and graph below to explore the share of unique donors each candidate has in zip codes across Northern California. Candidates that have dropped out of the race are listed as “Past Dem” and “Past GOP”. The drop down list allows you to type in a zip code or county. You can also click a zip code on the map. Purple areas are where neither Clinton nor Trump have more than 55% of the donors. Light blue and light red represent areas where the candidate has 55-70% of the donors, and dark blue or dark red represent Zip Codes with a 70+% majority.

Our data shows that most of Northern California is With Her; as blue stretches across the bay area. Things don’t turn red until you reach Stockton and Modesto.

 
Our key San Francisco Bay Area Findings:

• In San Francisco County, Hillary has raised $10.8 million from 9,758 documented donors, with over 96% of donors choosing her
• Trump raised just $154,208 in San Francisco County from 302 unique documented donors
• Trump’s has 32.9% of the donors in neighboring Solano County and 21.7% in Contra Costa County
• The slight leads Trump had in a few Zip Codes were lost in September and October, amidst his newest controversial comments
• Jill Stein has just 46 donors across San Francisco County, while Gary Johnson has 44

The data for this study was provided by the Federal Election Commission (FEC.gov). Here, disclosures for all campaigns can be found, documenting every dollar in and out. The final disclosure for the season, dated October 27, 2016, contains nearly 6.5 million lines of donor data since the beginning of the election cycle. We’ve chosen to rank zip codes by donor counts instead of dollar amounts, as we feel this better represents how many people support each candidate.
 

More interesting facts about Northern California donors

• While Hillary dominates in Northern California, Trump has a lot of support around and outside Los Angeles
• Hillary averages 82.9% donor share in Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma Counties
• There were 76 Zip Codes across Northern California where Hillary had 100% of the donors, albite an average of just 8 donors
• Trump has a majority of donors in just 1 Zip Code in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Solano Counties, as well as 4 Zip Codes in Sonoma and 3 in Contra Costa. He had 0 in San Francisco and Napa
• Evan McMullin, that guy you’ve definitely heard of, is a real candidate and he has 2 real donors in San Francisco

Here are a few San Francisco Bay Area Zip Codes Where Hillary is Untouchable

1. 94305 (Stanford) – 200 donors to Trump’s 0 – 100% donor share
2. 94114 (Dolores Heights) – 1275 donors to Trump’s 12 – 98.6% donor share
3. 94117 (Haight-Ashbury) – 751 donors to Trump’s 6 – 98.5% donor share
4. 94110 (The Mission) – 1039 donors to Trump’s 10 – 98.4% donor share
5. 94703 (Berkley) – 241 to Trump’s 3 – 98.3% of donors
6. 94612 (downtown Oakland) – 142 donors to Trump’s lonely 1 – 97.9% donor share

Both candidates have a few Zip Codes where they had 100% donor share, but there were less than 10 donors, so I haven’t listed them in favor of showing more populous areas. 

Most of Trump’s support came from outside the San Francisco Bay Area, but there were a few places near the city where he had support. The Zip Code with the most donors for Trump was 95648, just outside of Sacramento, with 108, giving him about 55% of donors there.

Donald Leads in These Zip Codes

1. 95236 (Linden) – 16 donors to Clinton’s 1 – 94.1% Donor Share
2. 95215 (Stockton)– 14 donors to Clinton’s 3 – 82.4% donor share
3. 95366 (Ripon) – 33 donors to Clinton’s 8 – 80.5% donor share
4. 95258 (Woodbridge) – 19 donors to Clinton’s 5 – 79.2% donor share
5. 95358 (Modesto) – 15 donors to Clinton’s 5 – 75% donor share
6. 95242 (Lodi) – 44 donors to Clinton’s 17 – 70.9% of donors

What is a “unique donor”?

To calculate unique donors, we combed through 6.4 million donations, looking at the names, dates, and zip codes. We removed common prefixes (Dr., Mr., Mrs, Ms,) that are often added accidentally or inconsistently across forms, and shortened 9-digit zip codes to 5 digits, since some candidates weren’t collecting the longer version, and many people don’t know theirs. People that have changed their names or moved in between donations could artificially inflate these numbers. After grouping donations from the same name and zip code together, we found there were just over 1.4 million unique donors between all candidates.

We at RentHop recognize that this is just one take on the current political climate, and it may under or over-represent some demographics. We believe in the power of knowledge and the transparency of open data to allow voters and all people to make informed decisions. We hope the consequence of this election is not overlooked, and no winner is assumed until every vote, including yours, is counted.