Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Mapping the Donors   [Yuval Levin]

The New York Times offers a nifty geographic breakdown of the donations received by the various presidential candidates. A couple of things jump out when the data are presented this way. First, Romney has easily the most diverse nationwide funding base, with some real concentrations in areas not near either coast. But second, and more interesting, the Clinton map and the Giuliani map are essentially identical, but Giuliani’s figures are smaller.

 

This raises an interesting question. Part of the case for Giuliani, and a very plausible part, has been that he would draw support in areas of the country where Republicans have not been doing well lately. That seems right intuitively, and these maps of funders back that up. But will he draw enough support in those places to actually do better than a Democratic opponent, or only to do better than a different Republican would have? A presidential election is 50 winner-take-all races. Does Giuliani just make some of the lost races a little closer (while losing others that a different Republican might have barely won)? Or does he actually win in some unusual spots?

 

A ridiculous question 18 months before an election, I know.

04/17 09:58 AMShare