31:T533,md`#### Why should we discuss this topic?
In 2020, it is no surprise to the general public that political ad spending by election candidates, specifically the precidential elections, have reached an all time high. We are talking about more than $5 billion USD being spent for election related ads. In this report, we will try to put into perspective just how much of an increase there has been from prior years to now in political ad spending. An analysis of campaign advertising by the Wesleyan Media Project revealed that $600 Million USD was spent on the 2016 election compared to the $120 Million USD in 2012 when President Obama seeked re-election. Furthermore, independent contributions in 2016 reached a peak of $1.4 Billion USD (opensecrets, 2020). This urges the question of where this money comes from, and if the amount of money spent on political ads actually influences election results. More specifically, how do contributions from independent supporters compare to contributions by organizations and if (and how) they affect the result of the election. We will try to get more in-depth insights using specific visualizations in this report. `32:T603,md`#### Timeline of expenditure by committees - A comparison between 2012 and 2016
The timeline below can help us understand the 2016 election better by paying attention to the PACs that had much higher expenditures during the dates leading up to the 2016 election. The Trump campaign brought about an anti-immigration movement amongst his supporters which can be noticed as the Get Our Jobs Back PAC seems to get many donations and have much high expenditures than any other PACs in the months leading up to the election. Additionally, PACs that leaned right and contributed to Trump's campaign (Eg. American Future Fund, NRA Institute for Legislative Action) had higher expenditures more frequently than others. For example, Priorities USA Action, a left leaning organization that aims to mobilize grassroot support for democratic candidates seems to have spend more money towards the end of the campaign. Even other left leaning PACs can be noticed to only have more ad expenditures towards the latter half of the campaign. Therefor, it can be concluded that PACs that were right leaning had much more frequent expenditures that were much larger in amount consistently throughout the months leading up the elections. This helps us understand the maps above since even though Hillary Clinton managed to get more donations from individuals over the country and won the popular vote, Donald Trump's team ran a very succesful targetted ad campaign which spent money early on in the election process to target voters in swing states. `33:[] 2f:{"title":"Independent Political Ad Spending","cells":[{"id":0,"value":"md`# Independent Political Ad Spending\n
`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":216,"value":"$31","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":218,"value":"md`#### The Data\n
\nThe Independent Political Ad Spending dataset we will be exploring in this report is sourced from Kaggle, orginally collected by The Federal Election Commission (FEC) that is responsible for collecting information on independent expenditures to ensure paayer's independence from candidates. Using this dataset, we can look into getting information about how much spending has increased over the years, who are the different independent supporters from individual states for the election candidates, and if there is a disparity between certain independent supporters in terms of the volume of funding they provide for a candidate. We will also look into how political spending affects other type of elections such as the house elections and the senate elections, and if there is any correlation between them.\n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":373,"value":"md`#### Where does the money come from?\n
\nNaturally, the first question that comes to our mind is where is all this money coming from? No doubt that a large sum of money is coming out of the election candidates pockets and their official supporters, but there is a huge proportion of funding that goes unnoticed; i.e. third party/independent supporters going out their way to support their favorite candidates in the elections. Bear in mind that an individual supporter can contribute anywhere from few hundred thousand dollars to hundred million dollars.`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":50,"value":"md`#### Does independent support from different states influence the historical left and right wing? \n
\nLet's take a look at the number of independent supporters across different states in the United States. The map shows the total number of 3rd party contributors in each state, filtered based on the two major presidential election candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.\n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":137,"value":"viewof selected = radio({\n title: \"Candidate\",\n options: [\"Trump\", \"Hillary\"],\n value: \"Trump\"\n})","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":200,"value":"map","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":254,"value":"md`The first thing we notice is the disparity in number of independent contributors for each candidate. Clearly, Hillary Clinton has a much higher volume of supporters in a lot of states compared to Donald Trump. However, this does not tell us much about the net funding provided by individual supporters. Let's look at the election results from 2016 to see if these support numbers match up to state results. `","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":248,"value":"md`

`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":259,"value":"md`Clearly, the net number of supporters had no impact on the election results as Donald Trump took the victory by quite the margin, even in states that had huge number of independent supporters for the rival candidate Hillary. The one thing we can infer from these results are that there is a clear disparity of number of supporters in the left for Hillary and in the right for Trump. Additionally, keeping the electorate college in mind, this map also explains how Hillary Clinton won the popular vote since she had more individual contributors than Trump, but lost the election.`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":52,"value":"md`\n#### Was funding consistent across all states for presidential elections by major democratic and republican candidates?\n
\n\n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":58,"value":"viewof selectYr = radio({\n title: 'Select Report Year',\n description:\n \"For 2016 -> Republican: Trump (W) , Democrat: Clinton | For 2012 -> Republican: Romney, Democrat: Obama (W) \",\n options: [{ label: '2012', value: 2012 }, { label: '2016', value: 2016 }],\n value: 2012\n})","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":267,"value":"swatches({\n color: d3.scaleOrdinal(candidates, ['red', 'blue'])\n})","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":61,"value":"line_chart","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":364,"value":"md`#### Contributions by Office Type\n
\nIn the plot below, we can observe that Presidential or Senate campaigns have much higher expenditures. Individual contributors are most likely to spend much more individually for Presidential elections. Campaigns for elections running for House are more likely to get smaller contributions and/or have less expensive expenditures than the rest. This plot however doesn't offer us much clarity about the frequency of expenditures since there are too many data points for us to make accurate conclusions.\n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":64,"value":"viewof topn = slider({\n min: 30, \n max: 10000, \n step: 1, \n value: 1100, \n title: \"Select number of top values\", \n description: \"Top N values based on expenditure amount\"\n})","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":67,"value":"viewof selectOffice = radio({\n title: 'Select Candidate Office',\n options: [\n { label: 'House', value: 'H' },\n { label: 'Presidential', value: 'P' },\n { label: 'Senate', value: 'S' },\n { label: 'All', value: 'A' }\n ],\n value: 'A'\n})","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":73,"value":"swatches({\n color: d3.scaleOrdinal([\"House\", \"Presidential\", \"Senate\"], ['#F1892D', '#0077C0', '#0EAC51'])\n})","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":74,"value":"interactive_chart","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":78,"value":"md`#### How does politicial ad spending across states depend on type of office?\n
\nHere, we have a clearer insight into the frequency of individual contributions to each campaign divided by state. This shows that campaigns for House are contributed to less frequenty than Presidential or Senate campaigns.\n\nIt is interesting to note that CT, MD, VA, and DC all have much higher rates of contribution from individuals. This may be just due to the fact that these states are all a few of the top ten states for highest median household income.\n\n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":84,"value":"viewof selStack = radio({\n title: 'Choose Stacking',\n options: [\n { label: 'Stacked', value: \"stacked\" },\n { label: 'Separated', value: \"separated\" }, \n { label: 'Percentage', value: \"percentage\" }\n ],\n value: \"percentage\"\n})","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":81,"value":"// Legend won't show up on the graph idk why\nswatches({\n color: d3.scaleOrdinal([\"House\", \"Presidential\", \"Senate\"], ['#F1892D', '#0077C0', '#0EAC51'])\n})","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":86,"value":"separated_chart","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":106,"value":"$32","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs"},{"id":116,"value":"viewof replay = html`