Over the last week I've been working on Who Contribued?, a site that uses the FEC financial data to track the geographic distribution of campaign contributions and expenditures and display it in a nice map. This includes numbers from the primaries, too.
The first thing that jumped out is how truly dominating Obama is when it comes to state-by-state contributions, but there's more interesting facts and trends I'll share below.
Let's start with the one everyone likes to see, Obama vs McCain in fundraising. All told Obama has raised over $420M in individual contributions and McCain has raised around $175M. So, you expect the absolute numbers to be larger, but is this because Obama is running up the margins in states like California and New York, or is his support more broadly based?
Red means 100% of the money from that state went to McCain and blue means 100% went to Obama. This map looks very blue to me. In fact, there are only ten states in which McCain raised more money, proportionately, then Obama. From most Obama support to least those states are TN, NV, ND, AL, AR, SC, OK, AZ, LA, and MS.
NV is very close — within less then a percent. All the rest of the states are either very strong McCain or leaning McCain. What does this say? Obama supporters are much more enthusiastic. TX, for example, is split 50/50 on the contribution side, but nobody thinks the vote will be that close.
These maps can show us where candidates are focusing and whether they're running a grass roots campaign or a media-centric campaign.
Here is where Obama is spending this money:
As you can see, Obama is nuking PA with money. States like MA are blue because he's paying media companies and telemarketers there, and IL is blue because he is paying his campaign staff. What about McCain?
That's weird. Why MD? Most of the money spent there for McCain is earmarked for "MEDIA," meaning he's buying ads from DC-area companies and beaming them across the country. Also, his campaign headquarters in in Virginia. All-in-all McCain's campaign is very DC-based.
We also have data for the primary candidates and looking at them is pretty fun. Looking at the per-capita numbers shows both where candidates' regional support was and what states they were hoping to win.
Who do you think was financing the Romney campaign?
How surprising, I know! But remember: this is the man who many considered to be the best hope for the Republican party. The only conservatives really energized were the ones from UT — at least Giuliani could command more resources from New England.
And what state was Ron Paul really trying to win?
Paul was really banking on New Hampshire, which he lost. In fact, he spent more in New Hampshire than he did in Texas or Florida by almost one million dollars.
All in all, if you want to see what the candidates are really doing, it's best to look at the money.