Here on Daily Kos, we are bombarded with requests to help the candidate du jour. Faced with the possibility of a 1994-like Republican tsusami, many of us would like to contribute. But to whom? It seems reasonable to inquire, before we donate, how effective our campaign contributions might be both in averting a 1994-style disaster and promoting progressive ideas when considering a particular candidate.
Most of us cannot set up a PAC, gather hundreds of thousands of dollars and run television ads without acknowledging their origin, despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows anyone bloated corporate interests to do so. All we can do is donate a small amount of money to a set of candidates whom we hope share our values and have some chance of victory.
So how can we figure out how to get good value for our contributions? You can just go with your gut, or you can do some analysis. Going with your gut is easy, so let's consider what an analysis might look like.
There are innumerable parameters one could use to measure the value of a candidate or the effectiveness of a donation. I'll list just some that come to mind:
Candidate:
- How progressive is he or she?
- How does the candidate stand on issues of particular relevance to me (e.g., LGBT equality, promoting renewable energy)?
- Just how bad would it be if the opposing candidate wins? (e.g., it seems likely that Christine O'Donnell would be more of a disaster than Carly Fiorina)
Chance of victory:
- How tight is the race?
- Is the campaign the candidate is running effective and organized?
- PVI of district, if a House race
Effectiveness of donation:
- How much money does the candidate already have and is likely to raise?
- How much money does his or her opponent already have and is likely to raise?
- How effective will my donation be (what is the overall cost of the campaign likely to be and how does my donation compare with that) ?
If one has data and/or wants to make reasonable guesses with regard to some of these factors or others one might come up with, one can put together a model, come up with some kind of weighting system for each factor, calculate a score and see which candidates are most worthy of your contributions -- in terms of that specific model and the parameters you chose.
To illustrate, here is a fairly simple model for the US Senate.
I've chosen three parameters:
- How close the race is.
- How progressive the candidate is.
- How effective the donation is likely to be.
To determine how close the race is, I've used the Pollster.com averages for the two candidates as they appear in the upper right of their graph; e.g., Boxer vs. Fiorina, and calculated the absolute difference between the two percentages (46.9 - 45.5 = 1.4%). The closer the race (the closer the absolute difference is to zero) the more valuable the donation.
To determine which candidates to consider, I selected only those races that were within 15 percentage points as above.
To determine how progressive a candidate is, I googled, and came up with Progressive Rankings and Contact Information for Members of the Senate in the 111th Congress. They score Senators on a scale from 100 to -100, the closer to 100 the more progressive. Candidates who are not already Senators don't have rankings, so I came up with estimates, based on existing Senators' rankings from the same or neighboring states, and my gut (see below). (Do other, possible better, progressive scorings exist? I'm sure they do.)
To determine how effective a donation is likely to be, I decided to use a simple proxy: the relative population of the state. The theory being that a donation will go a long way in Alaska, but not so far in California. The larger the population then, the less effective the donation. One could use a more sophisticated measure, like how much a media buy that reaches 5% of the population of a state costs, but I don't have that data, while approximate state populations are easy to obtain. To make things easy, I rounded a state's population to the nearest million.
I decided to weight all three parameters equally. (Of course, one can choose to make one or more parameters more important than others if you wish.)
After writing a simple little computer program to crunch the data and spit out scores (theoretical scores run from 0.0 to 1.0). here are the (somewhat surprising) results:
State | Candidate | Score | Poll. Avg. | Prog. Rt. | St. Pop. |
WI | FEINGOLD | 0.74 | -5.90 | 76 | 6 |
NV | REID | 0.74 | 1.80 | 39 | 3 |
IL | GIANNOULIAS | 0.71 | 0.10 | 47 | 13 |
NH | HODES | 0.71 | -6.50 | 55 | 1 |
CO | BENNET | 0.70 | -3.70 | 45 | 5 |
WV | MANCHIN | 0.69 | 3.50 | 34 | 2 |
WA | MURRAY | 0.64 | 5.50 | 46 | 7 |
CT | BLUMENTHAL | 0.63 | 7.20 | 46 | 4 |
KY | CONWAY | 0.59 | -7.40 | 35 | 4 |
MO | CARNAHAN | 0.58 | -7.20 | 35 | 6 |
PA | SESTAK | 0.56 | -6.90 | 46 | 13 |
DE | COONS | 0.54 | 13.30 | 50 | 1 |
AK | MCADAMS | 0.53 | -10.00 | 25 | 1 |
OH | FISHER | 0.52 | -9.40 | 50 | 12 |
NC | MARSHALL | 0.52 | -10.90 | 50 | 9 |
CA | BOXER | 0.51 | 1.40 | 61 | 37 |
LA | MELANCON | 0.42 | -13.90 | 26 | 4 |
Progressive rankings methodology for candidates who are not already Senators:
McAdams -- used Begich's score.
Bennet -- a guess.
Blumenthal -- used Dodd's score.
Giannoulias -- used Burris' score.
Conway -- added some to Lincoln's score.
Melancon -- used Lincoln's score.
Carnahan -- used Conway method.
Marshall -- a guess.
Hodes -- a guess.
Fischer -- subtracted some from Sherrod Brown's score.
Manchin -- used Rockefeller's score.
We see that Barbara Boxer takes a big hit because California is so huge. Harry Reid is a big winner because Nevada is so small and the race is so close.
It's likely that Feingold 'should' get a higher score than his top score now, because Rasmussen is the only poller of Wisconsin right now and the race would likely show tighter if others polled it. Coupled with his high progressive rating and relatively average state population, the race for the Wisconsin Senate, largely off most people's radar, is perhaps the most 'valuable' race of all!
Please note that this is just one model out bazillions that are possible. It doesn't take into account some data I'd consider important (i.e., how full the coffers of the candidate in question already are; e.g., I believe Harry Reid's campaign has oodles of moola. I wonder if there's some easy way of getting timely data on that).
This model is also subject to poll bias (e.g., Rasmussen being the only poller in Wisconin), and can not doubt be criticized on many levels. Caveat Emptor. The Secretary disavows any knowledge of this table. This is not an offer to sell. All such offers are done by prospectus only. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Do not try this at home (well, actually, go ahead; the worst you can do is end up sending a bunch of money to Alvin Greene...)
Only you can decide where your money goes, but it's nice to know that there can be method to the madness, if not perfection.
If there is interest, I may do a ranking of some of the closer House races using a similar methodology in the near future.