The United States presidential election of 2016 was the 58th quadrennial American presidential election, during the course the series of presidential primary elections and caucuses took place between February and June 2016, staggered among the 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. The presidential campaign finance data among the 50 states provides various valuable information for the prediction of the election. Current study focuses on 2016 US presidential campaign donations in the state of New York, which is the most influential region of today, not only in the United States but also all over the planet. New York State has been the most important source of political fund-raising in the United States for both major parties since 1988. Four of the top five zip codes in the nation for political contributions are in Manhattan. The top zip code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the 2000 presidential campaigns of both George Bush and Al Gore. The data were downloaded from the Federal Election Commission, starting from October 11th, 2013, up to date until December 31, 2016.
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According to the financial data set, key information such as demographic and geographic support for each party and candidate can be acquired, in addition, contributors’s gender, occupation, etc., can be added to draw more comprehensive analysis. The patterns of the donation flow over time also reflect the current status of the candidates in the race. For this project, my analysis will be centered on the support for major two parties, namely, the democrats and republicans, in terms of parameters like demographic, geographic, gender, occupation, time, etc.
By understanding those questions, we can have a better view of 2016 presidential election in New York State, and possibly, a preliminary estimate for the national statistics.
This is an exploration of 2016 US presidential campaign donations in the state of New York.
| Table of Contents |
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| Prerequisites 🔍📜 |
| Design 📐 |
| Conclusions 📌 |
| License 🔖 |
- RStudio
Step One - Choose Data Set
Click this link to download the corresponding data.
Step Two - Get Organized
This project eventually contain:
- The HTML and pdf files knitted from RMD file, which contain the analysis, final plots and summary, and reflection (in that order);
- The data set;
Step Three - Explore the Data
Brainstorm some questions that could be answered using the data set, then start answering those questions.
Step Four - Document Analysis
Document the exploration and analysis in an RMD file.
Step Five - Knit RMD file
After those substantial analysis, it is clear that democrats triumph in New York State. However, such analysis is only from one state, based on which we still can’t extrapolate the national level poll. According to current study, I list my main findings as followings:
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1 Democrats received much more funds than republicans in New York State, the ratio is even higher than 5: 1. Among all the candidates, Hilary alone possessed almost 80% of the donation.
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2 There were in total 25 candidates, 5 were democrats and the rest were republicans. Among those candidates, 4 were female and 21 were men.
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3 Top 1 contributor was Trish Hamlin, who donated more than 2000$ to republican.
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4 Distribution shows dnoation mainly came from the range of 0 to 500$.
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5 Democrats on average received more donation over time on the scale of day, month, and month_year.
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6 Democrats tended to receive a larger donation in the range of 1000 to 2000$ as well as small donations in the range of 0 to 1000$ than republicans.
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7 Top 20 contributors were more likely to support republican candidates.
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8 The top 2 occupations of contribution are retired and attorney, whereas the top 1 employer of contribution is self-employed.
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9 The average donations received by candidates were around 15.9 million dollars per democratic candidate and around 1.23 million dollars per republican candidate. The average donations made by contributors to democrat were around 1020 dollars and around 476 dollars to republican. The max donation received by candidate is around 63.13 dollars, and we had already known it was definitely Hilary, whereas the min donation received was around 6000 dollars, and it was given to republican’s candidate James S III, Gilmore. The max and min donation made by contributors are around 2700 and 0 dollars, they came from republicans, Trish Hamlin and Alfred Trotta, respectively.
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10 Female and Male were tended to donate to female and democrats in New York States, this analysis is not reliable as most donations went to top1 candidate, Hilary.
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11 Donations tended to concentrate on a more prosperous counties, average donation per capita is much less reliable than the average donation per contributor, because population fluctuation among the counties might cause Simpson’s paradox.
