Thursday, June 14, 2012

Sources of Campaign Donations to Representative Jason Chaffetz

Jason_Chaffetz Official PortraitOne of Senator Hatch’s campaign staff asked me to select another candidate for federal office and do an analysis of their campaign donation sources so they could be compared. I thought it was a reasonable suggestions so I decided to use Representative Chaffetz as a comparator to Senator Hatch. As I did for the Senator I tried to err on the side of contributions coming from Utah when there was subjectivity involved.

Below are charts & tables that summarize campaign contribution data I downloaded from MapLight (a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that seeks to show the impact of money on politics). The data contains all donations for election cycles 2006-2012. I downloaded the data June 13, 2012. 

Individual donors are required to provide addresses to campaigns so it is easy to show the source of funds from a location perspective. Note, there just a few donations that had no state listed so I assigned them to Utah.

For PACs it is difficult because if a is PAC set up by a company with a national or global presence then it is hard to identify a specific location. If on the other hand it is a PAC that represents an industry or cause then donors can come from anywhere in the US. For the PACs I went through the list and identified the ones that had I determined had a significant presence in Utah (for corporations I look up where they had offices or plants) then multiplied their donations by 2 to cover anything I missed to come up with the percentage donated that are Utah related. Note, similar to Hatch donations I did not take the time to research all of them but I did look for those that I thought would have a Utah presence first. Also, I generalized the industries for the PAC contributions (e.g. Pharmaceuticals, Hospitals, Doctors, and Medical Devices are categorized as Healthcare) and added a pie chart to the sources PAC donations by Industry.

Aside from the amounts involved there is a stark difference between the mix of donors between Senator Hatch and Representative Chaffetz. Whereas 22% of the individual donor’s to the Senator come from Utah, 69% Chaffetz’s donations come from Utah. The ratio of individual donors to PACs is 55/45 for Senator Hatch and nearly the reverse, 46/54 for Representative Chaffetz. Also, while Jason’s biggest PAC category was Political (mostly conservative groups which isn’t surprising since he is a Tea Party favorite) at 24%, Senator Hatch’s was Healthcare at 30%.

The source file, Chaffetz 2006-2012 Campaign Contributions (Excel 2007), can be downloaded simply by clicking on the aforementioned filename.

Here are the charts and tables:

  Contribution Amounts Percentage
Source   UT   Non-UT   Total     UT   Not UT
Individuals  $     400,264  $     180,097  $     580,361 46% 69% 31%
PACs  $     483,832  $     191,804  $     675,636 54% 72% 28%
Total  $     884,096  $     371,901  $  1,255,997 100% 70% 30%
Jason Chaffetz Campaign Donations 2006-20122006-2012 Campaign Contributions for Jason Chaffetz: PAC vs. Individual 2006-2012 Campaign Contributions for Jason Chaffetz: Location of Individual Donors2006-2012 Campagin Contributions for Jason Chaffetz: PAC Donations by Industry
   2006-2012   
State  Contributions  %
UT  $             400,264 68.97%
CA  $               42,302 7.29%
VA  $               23,159 3.99%
NY  $               18,700 3.22%
FL  $               17,010 2.93%
AZ  $               16,750 2.89%
CO  $                 9,800 1.69%
MD  $                 9,226 1.59%
CT  $                 7,500 1.29%
DC  $                 6,650 1.15%
NV  $                 6,250 1.08%
TX  $                 5,600 0.96%
MA  $                 3,000 0.52%
SC  $                 2,500 0.43%
NM  $                 2,400 0.41%
ID  $                 2,250 0.39%
DE  $                 1,200 0.21%
GA  $                 1,000 0.17%
NJ  $                 1,000 0.17%
PA  $                 1,000 0.17%
MI  $                 1,000 0.17%
OH  $                     500 0.09%
KY  $                     500 0.09%
OK  $                     200 0.03%
MT  $                     200 0.03%
TN  $                     200 0.03%
MN  $                     200 0.03%
Grand Total  $             580,361  

 2006-2012 
Industry  Contributions  %
Political  $             164,126 24.29%
Finance  $             124,243 18.39%
Energy  $               62,500 9.25%
Healthcare  $               60,250 8.92%
Retail  $               53,000 7.84%
Construction  $               29,500 4.37%
Manufacturing  $               26,000 3.85%
Defense  $               26,000 3.85%
Transportation  $               23,000 3.40%
IT  $               19,707 2.92%
Entertainment  $               17,500 2.59%
Agriculture  $               17,500 2.59%
Insurance  $               12,000 1.78%
Communications  $               11,500 1.70%
Real Estate  $               11,000 1.63%
Legal  $                 8,060 1.19%
Misc  $                 5,500 0.81%
Media  $                 4,250 0.63%
Grand Total  $             675,636 100.00%

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