With nary a week until the fate of our nation is decided, final FEC disclosures are in and they show Hillary Clinton continuing on her trajectory, leaving Donald far behind. RentHop is a small startup that embraces the diversity of this already great nation, so it wasn’t hard choosing Hillary this season. We feel it is our duty to use some of our data science skills to weigh in on this election, as this is a quandary that we are all in together.
Use the map and graph below to explore the share of unique donors each candidate has in Zip Codes throughout New York City. 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 Key Findings:
- Hillary Clinton has 37,009 unique donors in NYC giving her $41.49 million – 11.4% more donors in just October
- Trump roused the support of just 3,037 donors in NYC worth $1.53 million – 4.7% more donors in October
- A significant number of donations to the Trump campaign have been refunded over the past two months (we’ve revised some donor counts down since our last study)
- Trump has a slight majority of donors in Staten Island, with 435 to her 425, but Clinton raised more money
- Manhattan especially loves Hillary, 95% of donors gave to her instead Trump
- Just 135 donors gave to Gary Johnson and another 102 donated to Jill Stein across the city
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.
Clinton’s Campaign Contributions by Borough
- Manhattan: 37,009 donors – $33.14 million – 95% donor share – 10.2% more donors in October
- Brooklyn: 7,567 donors – $5.78 million – 92.8% donor share – 14.9% more donors in October
- Queens: 2,800 donors – $1.76 million – 77.8% donor share – 13% more donors in October
- Bronx: 720 donors – $482,432 – 84.9% donor share – 13.4% more donors in October
- Staten Island: 425 donors – $329,603 – 49.3% donor share – 10.4% more donors in October
Donald’s Donors and Donations by Borough
- Manhattan: 1,175 donors – $1,009,701 – 4.3% donor share – 5.95% more donors in October
- Queens: 772 donors – $201,705 – 21.5% donor share – 5.03% more donors in October
- Brooklyn: 530 donors – $162,421 – 6.5% donor share – 2.9% more donors in October
- Staten Island: 435 donors – $116,748 – 50.4% donor share – 2.6% more donors in October
- Bronx: 125 donors – $37,462 – 14.7% donor share – 5.04% more donors in October
What is a “unique donor”?
To calculate unique donors, we combed through 6.5 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 also matched up refunds with their original donations and if a candidate netted zero from a donor, then they weren’t counted.
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.
