Cincinnati Money in Politics
Ryan Roehm
10/4/2020
Introduction
This markdown shows data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that contains information on who is donating money in Cincinnati politics.
This data is a subset of all Cincinnati data from 2015 - present, and only contains information where a political party is afficiliated with the committee receiving the data.
This analysis will help to better understand which individuals and political parties are trying to have the most influence over the Cincinnati Political Landscape.
Required Packages
The following packages were required for this analysis:
| PACKAGE | Description |
|---|---|
| readr | Allows the imporation of .csv files |
| Skimr | Grants ability to generate summary statistics |
| Tidyverse | Loads the tidyverse packages |
| lubridate | Allows modification of dates for specific analysis |
| knitr | RMarkdown documents |
| rmdformats | RMarkdown themes |
| kableExtra | This allows for additional HTML tables with knitr |
The Raw Data
To access the data used in this case, download the .csv file of the data from the following website. Then load the data into a variable as follows:
#download the web-based data for Cincinnati Political contributions
#download.file("http://asayanalytics.com/cinci_politics","Cinci_Political.csv")
# Read the data and store in a database called Cinci_Data. This contains 57373
# total observations with 11 different variables. Some data is missing, such
# as the employer and occupation data of the donors.
Cinci_Data_raw <-
read_csv("Cinci_Political.csv")Cincinnati Political Contributions
The data comes from the raw data relative to the political donations to various committees in the Cincinnati Area. The data is first cleaned to change blank data to representative categories, and is then output into a usable data frame for the user to use for analysis.
The following table allows the user to filter and sort based on First and Last names, Address, their contribution amount, the committee they donated to, the political party affiliated with that committee, and the date that the contribution occurred on.
###Quick Data Analysis
Task 1
This data displays how the political donations have varied over time. As shown, the amount of are the largest in the first half of the year 2016, prior to the most recent election cycle, where the Presidential office as well as the House and Senate seats were up for re-election. After that election, we see a negative amount of funding, or a refund, of donations in January 2017.
Task 2
This analysis looks at the amount that each party spent in the last two election cycles (2015-2016 and 2017-2018). The amount is summarized in the table below:
| Party Affiliation | Total: 2015-2016 | Total: 2017-2018 |
|---|---|---|
| DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR | 0.00 | 21236.54 |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY | 4515200.03 | 4473933.34 |
| GREEN PARTY | 6386.25 | 1150.00 |
| INDEPENDENT | 10740.00 | 8846.50 |
| LIBERTARIAN PARTY | 11082.82 | 884.00 |
| REPUBLICAN PARTY | 5282866.86 | 4557983.28 |
From the table, we can see that the two main parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, greatly out-gained the other parties in accumulated contributions for these two election cycles, with the Republican party holding the slight edge in total amount for each cycle.
Task 3
The following chart shows the total contributions per committee. As shown, the committee that has the largest total contributions is the Party Committee.
The data shows that the largest portion of contributions were made to the party committee and not to an individual committee for a particular seat. Therefore, a conclusion that can be drawn is that most contributions were left up to the parties themselves to determine how to win elections in each area.
Directed Analysis
Task 1
This analysis determines which Cincinnati residents have contributed the most money to politics and lists where it goes. The table displays donors in descending order based on their total donations, and also displays the committee and party the contributions were made to. For simplification, only the donors that have contributed greater than $150000 are shown.
| Name | Party | Committee Type | Contributed Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| RICHARD ROSENTHAL | DEMOCRATIC PARTY | Party | 660920.4 |
| ROBERT CASTELLINI | REPUBLICAN PARTY | Party | 401200.0 |
| SUSAN CASTELLINI | REPUBLICAN PARTY | Party | 301600.0 |
| WILLIAM BUTLER | REPUBLICAN PARTY | Party | 226700.0 |
| GERALDINE WARNER | REPUBLICAN PARTY | Party | 202200.0 |
| DONALD OETERS | REPUBLICAN PARTY | Party | 196100.0 |
| CARL LINDNER | REPUBLICAN PARTY | Party | 170100.0 |
| KATHERINE STRAUSS ROSENTHAL | DEMOCRATIC PARTY | Party | 158920.9 |
| THOMAS ATKINS | REPUBLICAN PARTY | Party | 151900.0 |
The data shows that Richard Rosenthal contributed the largest total sum to the committees and to the Democratic party, however, 7 of the 9 donors who contributed more than $150,000 contributed to the Republican Party.
Task 2
This analysis determines which who has made the most individual contributions to a political committee by grouping the data by individual and generating the number of contributions, the average contribution per individual, and the total donation amount.
| Name | Number of Contributions | Average Contributed Amount | Total Contribution Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANN RUCHHOFT | 1290 | 33.69847 | 43471.02 |
| MAYNARD JOHNSON | 568 | 20.88053 | 11860.14 |
| SUSAN SCHAPIRO | 317 | 18.07120 | 5728.57 |
| JOYCE DILL | 312 | 180.99840 | 56471.50 |
| HELENA FISCHER | 254 | 22.81559 | 5795.16 |
This data shows that Ann Ruchhoft had the highest number of contributions but a factor greater than 2x. Based on the average contributed amount per transaction, most of the contributions were relatively small in amount, leading up to a larger number.
Task 3
Which employers were most represented in the number of contributions?
| Name | Number of Contributions | Total Contribution Amount |
|---|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI | 1375 | 162019.27 |
| HOMEMAKER | 481 | 1031404.44 |
| CINCINNATI CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL | 400 | 62553.65 |
| PROCTER & GAMBLE | 202 | 70462.00 |
| XAVIER UNIVERSITY | 150 | 11224.47 |
The data shows us that the employer that made the most number of contributions is the University of Cincinnati.
Task 4
This analysis generates a table showing how many individuals that work for Xavier made at least one contribution to a political committee. It filers the contributor employer based on Xavier University and then summarizes the number of donors and contributions per individual. It then generates the sum of total contributions for all employees of Xavier University.
| Name | Number of Contributions | Total Contributions |
|---|---|---|
| ABIE INGBER | 1 | 250.00 |
| AMANDA PAVLICK | 2 | 526.64 |
| ANN MARIE TRACEY | 2 | 650.00 |
| ANN TRACEY | 3 | 1750.00 |
| BRENDA LEVYA-GARDNER | 4 | 250.00 |
| DAN CELANI | 1 | 2.40 |
| DARCY JACK | 3 | 404.00 |
| EILEEN ALEXANDER | 1 | 500.00 |
| ELIZABETH JOHNSON | 6 | 537.31 |
| GEORGE TRAUB | 28 | 223.00 |
| GEORGE W TRAUB | 70 | 632.00 |
| JANET SCHULTZ | 3 | 250.00 |
| JENNIFER ROBBINS | 1 | 3.12 |
| JOSEPH FELDHAUS | 1 | 250.00 |
| KARL STUKENBERG | 1 | 1000.00 |
| KATHERINE LOVELAND | 2 | 350.00 |
| KATHLEEN REINMANN | 1 | 500.00 |
| MARTHA HOLLAND | 10 | 1350.00 |
| REBECCA CULL | 1 | 500.00 |
| ROBERT TOWNSEND | 4 | 196.00 |
| ROXANNE QUALLS | 1 | 250.00 |
| SUSAN ABEL | 1 | 250.00 |
| TERRY TOEPKER | 3 | 600.00 |
| Employer Name | Total Contributions |
|---|---|
| XAVIER UNIVERSITY | 11224.47 |
The data shows us that there are 23 people who work for Xavier University that donated to a political committee. This data may point to 22 people as “George Traub” and “George W Traub” may be the same person. The total donations summed to $11224.47, and the person who dontated the most number of individual times is George Traub.
Self-Directed Analysis
Task 1
This analysis looks at the contributions to refunds and how each committee is impacted.| Committee Type | # of Refunds | Total Amount |
|---|---|---|
| House | 102 | -233450.00 |
| Pac | 9 | -22300.00 |
| Party | 53 | -75157.02 |
| Presidential | 169 | -48852.09 |
| Senate | 168 | -335888.94 |
| Committee Type | # of Contributions | Total Amount |
|---|---|---|
| House | 9929 | 5640149.7 |
| Pac | 1265 | 621939.3 |
| Party | 18141 | 8700158.3 |
| Presidential | 16232 | 2111446.8 |
| Senate | 11283 | 3984493.7 |
The first table shows the total number and total amounts of refunds given by each political committee for all political parties. The second table shows the total contributions received by each committee for all political parties. What we can see from the data is that the Committee type for Party receives the most money in contributions, but grants the lowest percentage in terms of refund.
Task 2
Determine which Political parties the Cincinnati based schools, Xavier University or the University of Cincinnati, has employees donate to.
| Party | Employer | Total Donations | Total Amount of Donations | Donor Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR | UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI | 16 | 0.42 | 0.02625 |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY | UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI | 1274 | 135915.01 | 106.68368 |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY | UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI COLLEGE OF LA | 27 | 1522.76 | 56.39852 |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY | UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI FOUNDATION | 2 | 1254.05 | 627.02500 |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY | UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI LAW SCHOOL | 2 | 600.00 | 300.00000 |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY | UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI MEDICAL CENTE | 12 | 1850.00 | 154.16667 |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY | UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI/UC HEALTH | 3 | 125.00 | 41.66667 |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY | XAVIER UNIVERSITY | 138 | 9832.07 | 71.24688 |
| REPUBLICAN PARTY | UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI PHYSICIANS | 5 | 250.00 | 50.00000 |
The data shows that both the University of Cincinnati, and related departments except for the Physicians, as well as Xavier University have employees who contribute to the Democratic Party. The only group to donate to the Republican party are the UC Physicians.