Introduction

Purpose:

The purpose of this document is to make the data easier to interact with and understand. Below, you will find summary statistics, interactive tables, graphs, and other forms of analysis of the information.

The Data:

The data included in this report is from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which is one of many federal organizations responsible for collecting and reporting money in politics. Part of the data collected and reported by the FEC includes all monetary contributions made by individuals to politically affiliated organizations. The data used for this project is stored in a table where each observational row is an instance of a monetary contribution being made to a political committee. This data is a subset of all Cincinnati data from 2015-present.

Benefit/Use:

This data and analysis is to be used to examine the shifting political climate in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Packages Needed

Here are the packages that are used in this analysis:

Package Description
tidyverse It’s tidy, yo
DT Creates interactive tables
naniar Working with missing values
lubridate Easily working with dates

The Data

Variables:

Variable Description
contributor_last_name last name of contributor
contributor_first_name first name of contributor
???contributor_street_address street address of the contributor
contributor_employer employer of the contributor (write-in)
contributor_occupation occupation of the contributor (write-in)
contribution_receipt_date date the contribution was received
contribution_receipt_amount the amount contributed in this specific instance of a contribution being made. positive values reflect a donation whereas negative values reflect a refund of a previous donation)
contributor_aggregate_ytd the total amount of contributions made year-to-date by this individual contributor)
committee_name name of the political committee receiving the contribution
committee_type presidential, senate, house, party or political action committee
committee_party_affiliation party affiliation of the committee (democratic, republican, etc)

Datatable:

This table represents all of the data included in this document. It can be interacted with on a basic level by using filters and searches.

Analysis and Visualizations

Below are all of my tabvles and other visualizations. Please click through them to see the various analyses performed and explanations of each.

Avg Donation Amount by Year

This graph shows the average amount donated by year. You can see that it is lower for election years, likely because more people are donating smaller amounts to various campaigns, and the number of donations likely increases for those years.

Donation Amount by Party and Election Cycle

This visualization shows the total amount contributed to each party during the various election cycles.

Amount Contributed by Committee Type

This graph shows the amount contributed to each of the different committee types over the entire range of the study.

Who Spends Most $

This table shows the people who spend the most money on individual committees. To see all of a person’s donations, simply search for their last name in the search bar of the table.

Most Individual Contributions

This table shows the total number of contributions that have been made by individual persons. It is arranged in a descending order to show first the people who have made the most contributions.

Contributions by Employer

This table shows the total amount contributed by employer. Essentially, it groups all of the people that work for each employer and sums their contributions. However, since this field was written-in by the person, there are a number of employers that are not, but ideally should be, unified.

Xavier Contibutors

This table shows the total amount contributed by individuals that have donated who list Xavier University as their employer.

Refunds by Date

These graphs, separated by year, show the total amount refunded in each month. It seems that most of the refunds that happen, or at least the biggest amounts, happen early in the year.