Money Graphs
Who doesn’t love themselves some graphs. And some maps. Some graphs and some maps. But not just that. Some graphs and some maps of money!
If you’re the type of person that favors those things, this is just the post for you. That’s because below these pixelated words are some of those very things.
The money being graphed and mapped, is the money raised by Minnesota candidates for federal offices. Meaning candidates for US Senate and US House. I’ll begin two senate candidates, incumbent Democratic Senator Al Franken, and his most moneyed Republican opponent Mike McFadden. Why his most moneyed opponent, because these are friggin’ graphs of money, and there ain’t much point in graphing bupkis.
First are the graphs of each candidates number of itemized individual contributions, grouped into contribution ranges.
The two graphs above don’t really depict anything surprising. Al Franken received a whole bunch of small donations, and Mike McFadden mostly received donations of $2,500 and over. One thing that’s important to notice is that the scales of the two graphs are very different. Al Franken’s largest bar represents a value of almost 10,000, while Mike McFadden’s largest bar reaches just over 400.
Again, this isn’t anything we wouldn’t expect. Al Franken is a sitting US Senator, and even before that was a famous liberal person and he received a very large number of small contributions. Mike McFadden is hardly even known by people in Minnesota, his contributions then tended to skew more towards the high side.
I suspect a lack of surprise will also follow the next set of graphs and maps. But at least this time, there will be unsurprising maps as well as unsurprising graphs.
Al Franken raised more individual contribution money from outside of Minnesota then from Minnesota, while Mike McFadden raised more from Minnesota. Again, Al Franken is fairly well known throughout the country, while Mike McFadden is barely known in Minnesota.
Now let’s look at the same graphs for two candidates for the US House, more specifically the candidates for Minnesota’s Eighth congressional district; incumbent Democrat Rick Nolan and his Republican challenger Stewart Mills.
When looking at the types of individual contributions the two candidates have received, Stewart Mills Graph looks a lot like Mike McFadden’s, while Rick Nolan’s doesn’t look like Al Franken’s (not that it should). Nolan’s graph looks more like a normal distribution then the other three graphs of individual contribution amounts.
What do the maps look like?
And there you see the damning evidence. Stewart Mills received a bunch of his individual contributions from Wisconsin. Wisconsin! For shame Stewart Mills, for shame.
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All of these graphs and maps are from the LeftMN Elections site. Specifically, the newly added Money feature of the LeftMN Elections site. The Money section contains fundraising info for all Minnesota candidates for federal offices (US Senate and US House) from 2000 until now. Check it out.
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