DATA 608 Story 1: Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act Funding Allocation | Candace Grant

The ratio compares each state’s share of federal funding to its share of the U.S. population. A ratio of 1.0x means a state receives funding proportional to its population size. Above 1.0x indicates the state receives more than its proportional share; below 1.0x means it receives less.”

What the Map Reveals:

• The map makes the distribution of per capita funding immediately visible. The darkest shading on the entire map belongs to Red states — Montana and North Dakota stand out as the clear leaders in per capita funding, with South Dakota and West Virginia also showing notably deeper color intensity. Across the rest of the map, Red states in the South and central U.S. display a broad spread of moderate shading, indicating consistent mid-range per capita funding.
• By contrast, Blue states — concentrated along the coasts — are predominantly light in color, with the exception of Vermont and Maine in the Northeast.
• Large Blue states like California, New York, and Illinois appear notably pale, meaning their per capita funding falls well below smaller Red states despite receiving large total dollar amounts.

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Key Takeaway:

• Federal IIJA funding does not appear to favor Blue states. Among states receiving above-average per capita funding, the top four are all Red states — suggesting that political alignment did not drive favorable treatment under the Biden administration. Additionally, a larger proportion of Blue states fall below the national mean, and their shortfalls tend to be more consistently spread.
• By contrast, fewer Red states fall below the mean, and those that do tend to cluster closer to the national average. In short, the data suggests that population, infrastructure needs, and formula-based allocation — not party affiliation — are the primary drivers of federal funding distribution.
  
  
  

This project applied exploratory data analysis and visualization techniques to investigate whether federal IIJA funding distribution reveals political bias by examining total funding, per capita allocation, and population-funding ratios across all 50 states. Using dumbbell plots, diverging bar charts, choropleth maps, and scatter plots, the analysis layers multiple perspectives to guide the viewer through a data-driven narrative — from broad national patterns to state-level exceptions. The visualizations demonstrated that per capita funding favors smaller, predominantly Red states, suggesting that formula-based allocation and infrastructure need outweigh political affiliation in determining federal funding distribution.