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As a modern, real estate driven startup, RentHop understands how much people care to live in a neighborhood with like-minded individuals. That's much easier said than done, but what if you could find out the political views of your Chicago neighbors before you're waiting for the L train next to them? Well our data scientists crunched the numbers from FEC.gov on Chicago’s campaign contributions, so you can do that!
Find your zip code, choose your candidates, and explore the city and suburbs.
To create the map, we picked up where we left off with the nationwide data we prepared for our Trump Map here. We took the FEC’s disclosure reports detailing individual contributions to candidates. The data from the most recent national filing on February 20, 2016 contained a smidgen over 1.17 million documented contributions, totaling nearly $300 million for all candidates’ campaigns nationwide. To make this data more usable, we cleaned it up a bit first, grouping together line items from people with the same name, from the same zip code and with the same occupation, effectively removing duplicated entries for the same person. It is important to note that individuals giving less than $200 during the election cycle are not required to disclose personal information, but some do voluntarily give it. Although this stipulation affects the data for each candidate differently, it is not intrinsically biased and we feel the data is still statistically relevant for comparing them to one another.
With the resulting data, we set out to see where the donors are in Illinois and who they support. Candidates like Jeb Bush and Ben Carson collected significant amounts of money, but have since dropped out, so they have been grouped together with the rest of the former candidates. The interactive pie chart will always show candidates proportionate to each other, whether showing all or just your selected candidates.
The State of Illinois is characteristically known to be a blue state, so it comes as no surprise that Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are leading the way in donor count and amount raised. The real story here is how similar but different their numbers are. Hillary has raised more than five times the amount that Bernie has, but she has barely 200 more unique donors. We all know that a larger donation doesn’t equal a bigger vote, so we lean towards number of donors being more representative of how well received a candidate is. Also important to note here is the likely underrepresentation of Bernie’s support, as his campaign regularly touts his large numbers of small donations.
Looking down the Republican field, we see Marco Rubio at the front of the pack with a strong lead in amount raised. Ted Cruz trails closely in number of donors though. A similar story for John Kasich, who has over two thirds what Ted has, with barely one third of the supporters.
Donald Trump does not seem well-liked in Chicago, at least not by those with money to spare. You’re actually over 50 times more likely to meet someone who has flushed their money away than has given to his campaign. He is running a “I don’t need your money” campaign, but the “DONATE” button at the top of his website says differently.
Chicago’s most generous neighborhoods are, as one might expect, also the most expensive and affluent. The downtown-Mag Mile zip code of 60611 gave the most money of any with over 11% of the city's aggregate total. Lincoln Park was a not too distant second, followed by the north suburb of Winnetka, contributing nearly 7% of the county's total. We bet you can’t guess which candidate gets most of their support from Winnetka; hint: look for his individual neighborhood rankings below.
We analyzed where each has the strongest show of support based on percentage of donors supporting them and total dollars collected there. In order to not end up with a list of zip codes where a candidate had 100% support with just a few donors we looked only at areas with at least the median (17) number of donors. To calculate which neighborhoods identify most with each candidate, we used a subset of the Illinois data consisting of 163 zip codes that make up Cook County and the primary Chicago Metro Area.
With a quick glance, one notices that Hillary’s list of best neighborhoods looks a lot like the list of most generous ones. While that doesn't guarantee strong support, it does show her tight grip on wealthy voters. The neighborhoods where she had the largest share of donors was more spread out, with the South Shore and Calumet appearing on the list, along with Lincoln Park, which appears on both lists. The 60602 zip code of The Loop seems to love her as well, and River North rounds out her top five.
Bernie Sanders does things a bit differently, and he hasn’t been afraid to say so. He has managed to stay close in the competition against Hillary, 2,004 donors to her 2,210, keeping her on her toes. The recent surprise victory in nearby Michigan, showed that he appeals to the Midwest, just as he's appealing to donors in many middle class neighborhoods of Chicago. He's seeing strong support as far north as Evanston and Albany Park, as well as out west in Oak Park. He's collecting consistently modest sums in younger progressive areas liekLogan Square, Ravenswood, and Lake View.
Marco Rubio has a nice hold in affluent neighborhoods like Lincoln Park, The Mag Mile and Winnetka. He’s raised a respectable $549,690 in Cook County from 369 donors. He leads the Republican pack by a wide margin in most neighborhoods in terms of funds raised, but is trailed closely by Ted Cruz in donor counts. His strongest showing comes from Skokie with just 24% (9) of the 37 documented donors there. His other "best" neighborhoods show him at 20% or below of the donor count, which likely does not help him sleep well.
Far from the favorite here in Chicago, Ted Cruz is giving Marco Rubio a run for his donors (not so much for the money). Since Chicago has a low Republican population, one would not expect Ted to be leading many neighborhoods. With 313 donors in Cook County, he shows up strong in many near suburbs like Palatine, Lemont, and Wilmette. Lincoln Park has also given him some money, Possibly enough for dinner at Alinea.
Last but not least - unless we’re talking about donor counts or funds raised - is Donald J. Trump. Winnetka takes top prize for giving Donald the most monetary support of any neighborhood. It is not a large portion of the total contributions of Winnetka, but that’s the song playing across Chicago. In his most concentrated areas of support, it seems only to be because of the low amount of donors, as his 40 documented unique donors could fit in the same car on the L train. While we might choose to move to another car if that occured, it’s worth noting that his supporters are certainly under-represented across the country, both because they’ve given so little and because they’ve declined to disclose their personal details.
As a side note, while exploring his site, we found his statement regarding the cancelled protest, stating how no one was injured when the crowds disbanded peacefully and quickly. This is great news, although it doesn’t quite align with reports of multiple arrests and officers injured. Draw from that what you will, but we prefer to stick to numbers, where the truth is always quite evident.
If you’re in the market for a new apartment, or were just influenced to move because of this study, be sure to check out the extensive selection of Chicago apartments for rent.
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