A colleague writes,
We’ve been looking at donations from 2004 to candidates and parties… data from the FEC (it’s
part of a larger project we’re working on… the election is not ultimately interesting to us). Anyway, we noticed that the contributions from LA County represented 2.5% in terms of raw count and 3% in terms of value. This seemed small to me, but matches the population % for LA County (we’re about 10 million people).Do these 2.5% and 3% numbers sound right? I would have thought the metropolitan areas would have been higher.
This sounds right to me: overestimating the importance of Los Angelitos.
Cities I'd be curious about:
NYC
Chicago
Boston
Charlotte
St. Louis
Of course, care must be taken to deal with suburban living. I didn't think politics were as big a part of the general culture in LA as they are in NYC, Boston, and Chicago. Since Charlotte has such big banking growth, perhaps they've gotten a spike of donations. Since St. Louis is such competitive politically, perhaps they're higher (along with bigger towns in Iowa, NH, etc).