Cincinnati Money in Politics
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this document is to analyse the political contributions in Cincinnati and how they affect the Politics of the area. The data is drawn from the Federal Election Commission website and will represent data collected from 2015 to 2019. The analysis I will conduct will be useful for anyone who wants to get a better understanding of the political landscape of Cincinnati like which is the most preferred party and how contributions affected political outcome for a particular party.
PACKAGES USED
| Package | Description |
|---|---|
| tidyverse | The tidyverse collection of packages |
| lubridate | Easy date formatting |
| DT | Javascript enabled data tables |
| stringr | For ease of working with strings |
| viridis | For visualization color palettes |
| tidyr | To help create tidy data |
| dplyr | To help with data manipulation |
| pander | For creating tables |
| RColorBrewer | For visualization color palettes |
| rmdformat | Rmarkdown themes |
| stargazer | For making statistics tables |
VARIABLES
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| contributor_last_name | Contributor First Name |
| contributor_first_name | Contributor Last Name |
| contributor_street_1 | Contributor Street Address |
| contributor_employer | Contributor Employer |
| contributor_occupation | Contributor Occupation |
| contribution_receipt_date | Date of Contribution |
| contribution_receipt_amount | Contribution Amount |
| contributor_aggregate_ytd | Contributor Aggregate YTD |
| committee_name | Committee Name |
| committee_type | Committee Type |
| committee_party_affiliation | Committee Party Affiliation |
SUMMARY TABLE
Total Contribution by party affiliation
| committee_party_affiliation | Total |
|---|---|
| REPUBLICAN PARTY | 9840850 |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY | 8989133 |
| DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR | 21237 |
| INDEPENDENT | 19587 |
| LIBERTARIAN PARTY | 11967 |
| GREEN PARTY | 7536 |
Total Contribution by Committee Type
| Committee Type | Total |
|---|---|
| Party | 7878322 |
| House | 5028069 |
| Senate | 3447196 |
| Presidential | 1938628 |
| PAC | 597694 |
| PAC | 400 |
Total contribution per committee by year
| Committee Type | year(contribution_receipt_date) | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Party | 2016 | 3206726 |
| House | 2018 | 2620917 |
| Party | 2018 | 2097542 |
| Presidential | 2016 | 1423692 |
| Party | 2017 | 1295093 |
| Party | 2015 | 1278962 |
| House | 2017 | 1080974 |
| Senate | 2018 | 1057999 |
| Senate | 2015 | 967389 |
| Senate | 2016 | 809976 |
| House | 2016 | 689297 |
| House | 2015 | 636881 |
| Senate | 2017 | 611833 |
| Presidential | 2015 | 452544 |
| PAC | 2016 | 186156 |
| PAC | 2015 | 174505 |
| PAC | 2018 | 151063 |
| PAC | 2017 | 85971 |
| Presidential | 2018 | 52322 |
| Presidential | 2017 | 10070 |
| PAC | 2018 | 250 |
| PAC | 2015 | 150 |
How has amount contributed varied over time?
2016 had the highest amount of contributions followed by 2018.
How much money did each party raise for the two most recent election cycles?
For both the 2016 and 2018 election cycle, the republican party raised significantly more than the democratic party.No money was raised by the independent party for both cycles.
What is the relationship between the amount contributed and the committee type?
Most contributions went to Parties as opposed to the other committee types. With the Presidential committee receiving the lowest amount of contributions.
Which Cincinnati Residents spend the most money on poitics and where does it go?
Richard Rosenthal contributed the highest amount of money to the democratic party. Overall, of the top 10 highest contributors, 7 out of 10 contributed to the Republican Party.
Who made the most individual contributions?
Ann Ruchhoft has made at least 1,206 contributions making her the highest individual contributor.She may be someone who is heavily invested in how the elections turn out and in her party of choice’s success.
Which employers are most heavily represented in the data?
The top five most heavily represented employers in the data are, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Procter & Gamble, Xavier University and Trihealth.
How many individuals who work for Xavier made at least one contribution?
At least 22 employees who work for Xavier made a contribution with the top 3 contributors being, Ann Tracey, Martha Holland and Karl Stukenberg.
Contributions vs Refunds
It appears that most refunds are made at the beginning of the year, specifically in January, February and March.
Which party has received the highest amount of contributions to date?
Of all the parties, the Democratic party has received the highest amount of contributions to date. The Republican party has the second highest amount of aggregate contributions.