CSPANopticon

Council District 2: East Village, Gramercy Park, Kips Bay, Lower East Side, Murray Hill, Rose Hill

An artifact of the way in which Bloomberg and his City Council extended their leadership by an additional term is that most of the current crop of officials came into office in 2013, ran for re-election in 2017 and those seats are opening again in a huge wave. This is not the case for District 2. A byproduct of term limits is that putative candidates for office are more likely to seek their lane in an open year than when the incumbent is running for re-election.

The incumbent, Carlina Rivera, runs unopposed for her seat. Her predecessor, Rosie Méndez, came into office after the 2005 election, and got to serve her third term starting in 2014. It is kind of a quirk of election law that Mendez got a third term and it won’t be explained here, but Rivera, who was elected in 2017, is seeking her second term now.

This is one of the neighborhoods of Manhattan I have lived in.

This is a good baseline chart for a healthy incumbent. You can see fairly continuous fundraising activity. There are definitely visible peaks around 3 successive filing deadlines.

We have mapped every campaign’s fundraising by ZIP code as well. The map starts “zoomed all the way out” when you visit it because it contains donations in ZIP codes on the other side of the country.

Suffice it to say, we have already generated every insight possible from the January filing, and about all 372 active filers.

NYC is having its municipal election in 2021. We are covering every candidate in the universe. We rely on the CFB Candidates List to curate this data. Some filed committees may nonetheless file no financial activity whatsoever too: out of 397 committees that exist, 372 have filed transactions with the Campaign Finance Board (CFB) as of today.

All of the charts in this series shall be dot plots featuring the daily fundraising haul of each candidate. The sum total, average donation size, and transaction count are splashed on the top of each image. All City Council charts have a y-scale of 0 to $3,000 dollars and an x-range of October 1, 2019 and January 11, 2021.

These plots, therefore, show you the fundraising velocity of each candidate in an apples:apples format.

Council District 1: Battery Park City, Civic Center, Chinatown, Financial District, Little Italy, the Lower East Side, NoHo, SoHo, South Street Seaport, South Village, TriBeCa & Washington Square

The struggle continues, comrades! In the latest skirmish for the soul of the United States of America, some of our biggest banks have announced that they “are pausing all political donations.” My own take is that banks want to be seen “helping” and then will resume doing what they always do. Bankers gonna bank, you know?

But this is an important issue for political moderates, progressives, and reformers of all stripes and I feel we should bite down on this and never let go. It has already been shown that elite interests are outweighing voter interests when it comes to influence over public policy. It has also been shown, however, that mass movement organizing and de-platforming certainly work in gaining leverage over these corporations. So that is where we direct our work. In the analysis below, we are only displaying political giving relationships that sum to ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00) or greater.

The most important thing that this cursory analysis shows is that if you were a person and you managed your relationships with this level of incoherence and casual disregard for your surroundings (and the people in it), you would be branded a psychopath and you would not be truly welcome at anyone’s social occasions. The data below are all from filings submitted in CY 2020.

And so our first target is Goldman Sachs, who give via THE GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC. POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (C00350744) of Washington, DC. Using Federal Surveillance by Competitive Advantage Research, we identified when FEC-regulated committees report their own receipts of funds from this target committee. Here is an idea of just how politically schizophrenic and anti-social bank giving really is. Check out these top beneficiaries of GoldmanSachs:

Beneficiary	Sum	Count	Average	Earliest	Latest
CITIZENS FOR PROSPERITY IN AMERICA TODAY PAC	$20,000.00	4	$5,000.00	20191231	20201102
STEVE DAINES FOR MONTANA	$20,000.00	4	$5,000.00	20190610	20190923
FRIENDS OF DENVER RIGGLEMAN, INC.	$18,500.00	8	$2,312.50	20190524	20191228
DCCC	$18,000.00	5	$3,600.00	20191107	20200929
SHAHEEN FOR SENATE	$17,500.00	7	$2,500.00	20190920	20200930
ALEX MOONEY FOR CONGRESS	$16,500.00	11	$1,500.00	20170927	20200924
CLAY JR. FOR CONGRESS	$16,000.00	10	$1,600.00	20190704	20200303
NEW DEMOCRAT COALITION ACTION FUND	$15,000.00	3	$5,000.00	20190930	20201102
PERDUE FOR SENATE	$15,000.00	5	$3,000.00	20190520	20201130
CHC BOLD PAC	$15,000.00	3	$5,000.00	20201106	20201106
PROMOTING OUR REPUBLICAN TEAM PAC	$15,000.00	4	$3,750.00	20190904	20201123
FRIENDS OF BEN MCADAMS	$14,000.00	9	$1,555.56	20191205	20200827
STEIL FOR WISCONSIN, INC.	$14,000.00	7	$2,000.00	20190624	20201031
LANCE GOODEN FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE	$13,000.00	7	$1,857.14	20190701	20200226
ZELDIN FOR CONGRESS	$12,500.00	6	$2,083.33	20191014	20201103
BILL FOSTER FOR CONGRESS	$11,000.00	6	$1,833.33	20191001	20201103
FRENCH HILL FOR ARKANSAS	$11,000.00	9	$1,222.22	20190508	20200917
DEVIN NUNES CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE	$10,500.00	5	$2,100.00	20191014	20200302
JOBS, EDUCATION, & FAMILIES FIRST – JEFF PAC	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20191004	20191004
DOUG JONES FOR SENATE COMMITTEE	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20191009	20191009
DSCC	$10,000.00	1	$10,000.00	20200928	20200928
NRSC	$10,000.00	1	$10,000.00	20200928	20200928
BEN SASSE FOR U.S. SENATE, INC.	$10,000.00	4	$2,500.00	20190717	20190717
NRCC	$10,000.00	1	$10,000.00	20200929	20200929
FREEDOM FUND	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20191231	20200930
EQUALITY PAC	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20191022	20191022
FORWARD TOGETHER PAC	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20191108	20200229
BLAINE FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	4	$2,500.00	20190514	20200930
BLUE DOG POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20190823	20190823
JOSH GOTTHEIMER FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20191106	20191106
GRANITE VALUES PAC	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20190807	20190807
MCHENRY FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	3	$3,333.33	20190820	20200930
COMMITTEE FOR A DEMOCRATIC FUTURE	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20191223	20201031
ANTHONY GONZALEZ FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	7	$1,428.57	20190528	20200930

Now let’s rinse and repeat with JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. FEDERAL POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (C00104299) of Washington, DC.

Beneficiary	Sum	Count	Average	Earliest	Latest
CHC BOLD PAC	$25,000.00	5	$5,000.00	20191202	20201019
SANFORD BISHOP FOR CONGRESS	$17,000.00	12	$1,416.67	20130630	20200930
TOMORROW IS MEANINGFUL PAC	$17,000.00	4	$4,250.00	20191218	20200911
DSCC	$15,000.00	1	$15,000.00	20200917	20200917
NEW DEMOCRAT COALITION ACTION FUND	$15,000.00	3	$5,000.00	20191230	20200930
NRSC	$15,000.00	1	$15,000.00	20200224	20200224
STEVE DAINES FOR MONTANA	$14,500.00	12	$1,208.33	20190630	20200929
STEIL FOR WISCONSIN, INC.	$14,000.00	4	$3,500.00	20190930	20201019
TEAM GRAHAM, INC.	$14,000.00	7	$2,000.00	20190430	20201026
PERDUE FOR SENATE	$13,500.00	8	$1,687.50	20190630	20200630
ZELDIN FOR CONGRESS	$13,000.00	7	$1,857.14	20191223	20201027
HUIZENGA FOR CONGRESS	$13,000.00	7	$1,857.14	20190613	20201031
ANDY BARR FOR CONGRESS, INC.	$11,500.00	7	$1,642.86	20200211	20201019
ALEX MOONEY FOR CONGRESS	$11,000.00	7	$1,571.43	20170330	20201026
HALEY STEVENS FOR CONGRESS	$11,000.00	5	$2,200.00	20190530	20200630
JOSH GOTTHEIMER FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	3	$3,333.33	20191014	20200715
FREEDOM FUND	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20191223	20200917
FRENCH HILL FOR ARKANSAS	$10,000.00	4	$2,500.00	20191230	20200924
EQUALITY PAC	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20200930	20200930
FIRST STATE PAC	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20191206	20200227
TEXANS FOR SENATOR JOHN CORNYN INC.	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20200630	20200630
ANN WAGNER FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	3	$3,333.33	20190621	20201026
BLAINE FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	5	$2,000.00	20190614	20200925
BRADY FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	3	$3,333.33	20191231	20201026
UPPER HAND FUND	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20190923	20201029

We do this one more time today with CITIGROUP INC. POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE – FEDERAL (C00008474) of Washington, DC. These banks, they show at least a little sense to pretend to be embarrassed by all of this right now. For this table, I fudged it slightly, including one beneficiary who got only $9,500 because that beneficiary is David Perdue.

Beneficiary	Sum	Count	Average	Earliest	Latest
NRSC	$30,000.00	2	$15,000.00	20200306	20200306
FRIENDS OF DENVER RIGGLEMAN, INC.	$23,000.00	14	$1,642.86	20190611	20200331
SANFORD BISHOP FOR CONGRESS	$19,500.00	9	$2,166.67	20130806	20190319
EQUALITY PAC	$15,000.00	6	$2,500.00	20191118	20201016
RICHARD E NEAL FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE	$15,000.00	5	$3,000.00	20190630	20200829
BEATTY FOR CONGRESS	$15,000.00	6	$2,500.00	20200309	20200402
DSCC	$15,000.00	1	$15,000.00	20200310	20200310
NEW MILLENNIUM PAC	$12,500.00	3	$4,166.67	20191118	20201023
HUIZENGA FOR CONGRESS	$12,500.00	8	$1,562.50	20190613	20200929
SHAHEEN FOR SENATE	$12,000.00	7	$1,714.29	20190918	20201029
ANTHONY GONZALEZ FOR CONGRESS	$12,000.00	8	$1,500.00	20190628	20200930
TEXANS FOR SENATOR JOHN CORNYN INC.	$10,500.00	6	$1,750.00	20190930	20200930
FRENCH HILL FOR ARKANSAS	$10,000.00	6	$1,666.67	20190628	20200810
DCCC	$10,000.00	1	$10,000.00	20200313	20200313
ANN WAGNER FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	5	$2,000.00	20190401	20200919
FINANCIAL SERVICES FORUM POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20191021	20200511
MALONEY FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	4	$2,500.00	20200309	20200621
BLAINE FOR CONGRESS	$10,000.00	8	$1,250.00	20190614	20200925
CA LUV PAC (CALIFORNIA LEADERSHIP UNITED FOR VICTORY PAC)	$10,000.00	2	$5,000.00	20200627	20200627
PERDUE FOR SENATE	$9,500.00	6	$1,583.33	20190927	20200318

Because I got intense déjà vu reading all these names over and over, I decided to tally the relationships between these 3 PACs and their sphere of influence. Certain people, such as David Perdue–who held the balance of power in the universe until just last week–rise to the top easily, and one thing that is interesting to note is that it is relatively rare that all 3 PACs are not interested in the same committees. The texture of their shared priorities is made real by this kind of analysis.

Their largest commitment, of course, was to a Republican Senate.

Beneficiary	Benefactors	Sum	Count	Average	Earliest	Latest
NRSC	3	$55,000.00	4	$13,750.00	20200224	20200928
FRIENDS OF DENVER RIGGLEMAN, INC.	3	$47,500.00	25	$1,900.00	20190524	20200331
CHC BOLD PAC	3	$45,000.00	9	$5,000.00	20191202	20201106
SANFORD BISHOP FOR CONGRESS	3	$45,000.00	28	$1,607.14	20130430	20200930
DSCC	3	$40,000.00	3	$13,333.33	20200310	20200928
PERDUE FOR SENATE	3	$38,000.00	19	$2,000.00	20190520	20201130
STEVE DAINES FOR MONTANA	3	$37,500.00	18	$2,083.33	20190610	20200929
STEIL FOR WISCONSIN, INC.	3	$37,000.00	19	$1,947.37	20190624	20201031
EQUALITY PAC	3	$35,000.00	10	$3,500.00	20191022	20201016
ZELDIN FOR CONGRESS	3	$34,500.00	18	$1,916.67	20191014	20201103
HUIZENGA FOR CONGRESS	3	$34,500.00	20	$1,725.00	20190613	20201031
FRENCH HILL FOR ARKANSAS	3	$31,000.00	19	$1,631.58	20190508	20200924
BEATTY FOR CONGRESS	3	$30,500.00	14	$2,178.57	20200220	20200629
BLAINE FOR CONGRESS	3	$30,000.00	17	$1,764.71	20190514	20200930
NEW DEMOCRAT COALITION ACTION FUND	2	$30,000.00	6	$5,000.00	20190930	20201102
SHAHEEN FOR SENATE	2	$29,500.00	14	$2,107.14	20190918	20201029
ANTHONY GONZALEZ FOR CONGRESS	3	$28,000.00	18	$1,555.56	20190528	20200930
DCCC	2	$28,000.00	6	$4,666.67	20191107	20200929
ALEX MOONEY FOR CONGRESS	2	$27,500.00	18	$1,527.78	20170330	20201026
MCHENRY FOR CONGRESS	3	$26,500.00	10	$2,650.00	20190820	20200930
TEXANS FOR SENATOR JOHN CORNYN INC.	3	$25,500.00	9	$2,833.33	20190930	20200930
FRIENDS OF BEN MCADAMS	3	$25,500.00	13	$1,961.54	20191205	20200916
BILL FOSTER FOR CONGRESS	3	$25,000.00	15	$1,666.67	20191001	20201103
JOSH GOTTHEIMER FOR CONGRESS	3	$22,500.00	6	$3,750.00	20191014	20200916
RICHARD E NEAL FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE	2	$22,500.00	8	$2,812.50	20190630	20200924
ANN WAGNER FOR CONGRESS	3	$22,000.00	9	$2,444.44	20190401	20201026
ANDY BARR FOR CONGRESS, INC.	3	$22,000.00	13	$1,692.31	20200211	20201019
COLLINS FOR SENATOR	3	$21,500.00	10	$2,150.00	20190518	20201028
TEAM GRAHAM, INC.	2	$21,500.00	10	$2,150.00	20190319	20201026
CLAY JR. FOR CONGRESS	2	$21,500.00	14	$1,535.71	20190328	20200331
MCSALLY FOR SENATE INC	3	$21,000.00	11	$1,909.09	20191210	20200924
CITIZENS FOR PROSPERITY IN AMERICA TODAY PAC	1	$20,000.00	4	$5,000.00	20191231	20201102
FREEDOM FUND	2	$20,000.00	4	$5,000.00	20191223	20200930
TOMORROW IS MEANINGFUL PAC	2	$20,000.00	7	$2,857.14	20191218	20200911
SCALISE LEADERSHIP FUND	3	$20,000.00	7	$2,857.14	20191010	20201103
BEN SASSE FOR U.S. SENATE, INC.	2	$19,000.00	11	$1,727.27	20190717	20200320
PETERS FOR MICHIGAN	3	$18,000.00	8	$2,250.00	20141103	20200825
BLUE DOG POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE	3	$17,500.00	4	$4,375.00	20190823	20200916
DOUG JONES FOR SENATE COMMITTEE	3	$17,500.00	5	$3,500.00	20191009	20201026
HALEY STEVENS FOR CONGRESS	3	$17,000.00	9	$1,888.89	20190530	20200630
RICHMOND FOR CONGRESS	3	$17,000.00	11	$1,545.45	20190627	20201103
HOYER FOR CONGRESS	3	$17,000.00	7	$2,428.57	20191126	20201102
TED BUDD FOR CONGRESS	3	$16,000.00	11	$1,454.55	20190812	20200930
TOGETHER HOLDING OUR MAJORITY PAC	3	$15,500.00	6	$2,583.33	20191007	20200221
PROMOTING OUR REPUBLICAN TEAM PAC	1	$15,000.00	4	$3,750.00	20190904	20201123
INNOVATION POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE	3	$15,000.00	4	$3,750.00	20200625	20201105
DEVIN NUNES CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE	2	$15,000.00	8	$1,875.00	20191014	20200303

Among the policy victories won by the 2020 protest movement in New York was the repeal of “50-A”, the law that kept police misconduct records secret from the public. Since its recent repeal, both the New York Civil Liberties Union and ProPublica filed Freedom of Information requests for the data pertaining to the NYPD. The ProPublica data dropped first and we were among the first to map its contents.

The police union sued to tie up the release of the data in the NYCLU suit, because this data was broader in scope. In this lawsuit, a map which we published with the ProPublica data was cited in an amicus brief making the argument that the release of more such data is in the public interest. And thanks to a favorable ruling in that lawsuit, the full data set of all misconduct complaints against officers of the New York Police Department made to the Civilian Complaint Review Board is now public.

We can explore this data now, noting that it has been kept secret for decades and is now public thanks to the hard fought victories of the people in the streets. The story of this map is clear to anyone familiar with the racial geography of New York.

When the woman in Central Park who called the police on a black birdwatcher in a now viral incident was charged with filing a false police report, Mayor De Blasio applauded the charge, and warned that had the police shown up, the encounter could well have been fatal.

The mayor constantly speaks on the subject of violence and discrimination by the NYPD as if the NYPD does not answer to him, as if he did not appoint the police commissioner, as if he does not have the power to fire the police commissioner, as if he is not actually the mayor of New York, and as if he has not been the mayor for the last 6 years.

In theory, no innocent person should have anything to worry about if the police are called on them. The mayor broadcasts that he does not trust his own police department not to murder an innocent black man, but speaks on it entirely as if it is run by someone else.

New York City is approximately 42.8% Black and/or Non-White Hispanic according to the Census Bureau, but 70.8% of misconduct complaints against currently active NYPD officers who have had at least one complaint against them substantiated have been made by black and/or Hispanic people, according to the freshly released “50-A” data that is newly public. Additionally, 16.5% of complaints do not have racial information on the complainant. White people account for only 8% of complaints, and Asians 1.5%.

Slightly more than 1 in every 10 active duty NYPD officers has had a complaint against them substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which makes the crime rate of the NYPD significantly higher than that of the public at large.

We looked at the 1-05 Senate Extra-Double-Vaganza in comparison to the 11-05 General election contest. Perdue-Ossoff (11/3); Warnock-Loeffler (11/3); Perdue-Ossoff (1/5); and Warnock-Loeffler (1/5). And it is clear: because everybody had a go in November, this was definitely a turnout election.

We decided to look at how sharply turnout fell–because it fell everywhere–and who that benefitted. First, we’ll compare Ossoff and Perdue. Jon Ossoff’s vote tally fell by 164,636 counted votes, meaning he enjoyed some coattails from Joe Biden and the rest of the ticket being so exciting. David Perdue, on the other hand, lost 268,535 votes. One could begin to mount the argument that in secular terms, Perdue would have lost on lack of relative partisan enthusiasm alone but that is not all that happened so we won’t do that.

The other contest proves a little more interesting because it ran kind of like a Primary in November, meaning we can look both at relative enthusiasm and also voter identification–did the respective nominees clean up with voters who picked their colleagues instead last year? When you count up all the Democratic votes from November and compare them to what Warnock had in the runoff this week, you see that his tally fell by 149,829 votes. This is similar to Ossoff’s net, though Warnock can be said to have retained roughly 15,000 more votes. Loeffler meanwhile, posted up a loss of 250,543 votes from November. She actually retained roughly 20,000 more votes than Perdue did. It was not enough.

Simply put, Republican support decayed a lot faster than Democratic support. We find that in all but a few counties, Republican participation fell faster than Democratic participation, or that Democrats improved their turnout share in over 90% of counties yesterday. Given that the state is purple in its turnout metrics, and its November results were very close, the numbers we land on for this isolated January runoff are a testament to voter targeting, field organizing, and voter contact.

Polls close at 7pm Eastern tonight in the double runoffs for both US Senate seats in Georgia. The balance of power in the U.S. Senate, and therefore the ability to pass any kind of legislation in the next two years, rests in whether or not Democrats John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock can win these two senate seats.
Once polls close, results will be tracked and mapped live here, as they come in. All results shown here will lag behind the Associated Press’s data feed by 30 seconds at the absolute most. That latency is mostly self-imposed; the requests for new data are slowed down slightly so that the AP does not interpret the server’s constant requests for new data as attempting a DDoS or other form of cyber attack.

In the mean time, there’s plenty of archival election data to browse here as well. Within the United States, you can browse the final results of over 6,000 discrete contests from the November general election, for everything from the Presidency to both houses of congress and almost every state legislative seat in the country. In New York City the results are available by Election District, which is to say, city block by city block.

And around the world, new additions to the archive include:
–India’s 2019 parliamentary election, the largest democratic exercise in human history with over 613 million votes cast.
–25 years of elections to the European Parliament, which governs the 2nd largest democratic electorate in the world, after India.
-The 2019, 2017, and 2015 UK Parliamentary elections, and

-The last 5 Canadian Parliamentary elections

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 brings a special election day to the Peach State. We are mapping it live right as polls close. Two different US Senate seats are in the contest. This typically never happens within one of our states because of the Senate’s class system, wherein all sitting Senators comprise three different election classes within the body. However, while David Perdue (R) stands for re-election to a six-year term, Kelly Loeffler (R) currently holds her seat as a vacancy appointment made by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R) upon the retirement of Johnny Isakson. This election is for what is known as an “unexpired term” which will run through January, 2023.

Both of these contests were originally held on November 3, 2020–at the same time as all the other Federal elections from President on down. And while the Presidential contest delivered clear results in Georgia, despite how many extra times it has been counted, both of these Senate contests triggered Georgia’s runoff rules due to the eye-watering margins they presented. So here we are.

4,952,175 people voted in the Perdue-Ossoff contest whereas 4,914,361 people voted in the Loeffler contest. It is hard to explain why 37,814 fewer voters would have an opinion about their other US Senator but the relatively muted shading of the second map shows Reverend Warnock also managed to be more competitive in some suburban areas of the state, although this might come down to the Republicans’ split lane, with both Loeffler and Collins on the ballot.

In the past we have measured “unhappy voters” being the share of partisan voters in an area who likely voted for a candidate who did not go on to win the Primary. In this case, we can treat Loeffler besting Collins on 11-03-20 as a kind of primary. In Warnock picking off some of these suburbs, we can expect to find some unhappy Collins voters, and the question is whether Loeffler has reconnected with them or if the trend by which this race already under-voted is bad for Loeffler. Quite possibly, this will affect turnout for Loeffler as the party’s standard bearer. Possibly it also reflects successful organizing by Warnock. These and more possibilities are in the mix.

For live election coverage, our data updates automatically so click refresh on these maps, and share and enjoy!

We mapped the average age of voters who participated in the 11-03-20 General election, and bucketed those ages into cohorts, so that the map highlights the average voter age in each ED. While we typically use opacity to display continuous values, such as percentages, a linear color gradient is more appropriate for moving between categorical, segmented, or otherwise bucketed values. We tell our product its start color and its end color, and how many colors we need in total, and we set our “quantization stops” to match. For this example, we have designed 5 “average age cohorts”. 18-29, 30-41, 42-53, 54-65, and 66 and up.

In nearly 88% of all precincts, the average voter age on 11-03-20 was 42-53 which gets an appropriately subdued hue, automatically. The capital for youth organizing is rendered clearly visible:

Also highly illuminated are enclaves where seniors voting is more prevalent. These are far, far more common.

By automating our data, quantizations, and maps, we can pull together comparisons. Here is the age map repeated for the 06-23-20 Primary election. That lets us compare these contests right alongside each other. The General map is on the left and the Primary map is on the right. What we see here is pretty interesting.

The Primary map is far more lush and colorful because the average age of voters was more likely to skew either a little younger or a lot older than in the General where everyone apparently pulled together and averaged out as truly middle-aged.

Keeping in mind that primaries are lower turnout affairs in New York and turnout is poor across the board, the magnitudes tend to suggest something about the political targeting that campaigns tend to employ. This targeting–based on the concept of “Prime” voters tends to be very senior-heavy and here’s why:

Seniors are more likely to have longer fixed-addresses, and to have been contacted in the past. This improves the likelihood of their political participation which in turn increases the chance they fall within a Voter Universe selection that is designed for and purchased by a campaign.

Otherwise, you can see improved performance–relative to the local mean that day–by youth organizers in Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Clinton Hill, Bushwick, Ridgewood, and Astoria.

Quantization is the process of mapping input values from a large (or continuous set) to output values in a (more countable) smaller set. “Rounding” and “truncation” are typical quantization processes that you hear about. Going to percentiles, quartiles, or quintiles are others. When we work on voter models, for instance, our clients are usually looking for some meaningful way to sort between different blocs of voters, and we land on some process to essentially separate them into distinct piles. What we are yielding is some quantization of this data. Though it is not spoken of as such, terms like “Prime Voters” and “Double Prime Voters” are actually someone or other’s quantizations of a voter file.

There is not necessarily a right or wrong answer to how you quantize. It depends what you need to do. Perhaps you are right to identify the top fifth of voters through some statistical means, but it may have borne out that you could have carried the top quarter of voters instead. Even going with quintiles over quartiles–for instance–is a meaningful decision that will “bias” your output. In operative politics, there isn’t a specific reason to use a specific statistical technique when you are pursuing real world outcomes outside of a lab.

And that is what this post is really about: how quantization can be used to manipulate a presentation of data. What follows are 3 line charts that were all made using the exact same dataset. For all intents and purposes we are looking at some kind of data that is tallied for each day of the week, and we are seeing Monday through Sunday, categorically, on each of these matched charts. As you peruse them, do you notice how the first chart elicits the most dramatic effect, whereas the third one suggests something relatively muted? Do you know what varies between each of these 3 charts?

Yep, it’s the quantization. But in this case, we are not mapping a collection of values down, but we are doing something else: we are manipulating the y-scale of the charts. While each chart is the same width–reflecting 7 days of data–the actual height of the numberline shown to you here varies. The slope of any line or curve on a chart like this is ultimately determined by how much height you supply.

In short, to make a curve more dramatic, remove headroom from the chart so that the top of the axis skims over the highest value you’re charting. On the other hand, to flatten or mute something you’re measuring, simply make the y-axis taller to inflate the space. That is all that is happening as we move from one chart to the next here: we are manipulating the y-scale. This is one of the most frequent ways to lie with statistics. When comparing the campaign finance of various campaigns with our visual work, we make a strong point of examining them on identical y-axes.

The number-values displayed on the charts above range from 0.1 to 0.6, by the way. And it does not matter if these represent vast deltas or infinitesimal ones–the units we’re in don’t even matter here. How you are led to perceive the output, that is what matters. There are no y-axis labels on the charts above, but usually you are shown just one chart at a time and you accept the y-scale, even when it is shown to you. When making an inference from data it is very important to know whether you are able to form an opinion from the actual facts and figures, or whether you are just being shown a line that somebody massaged into a desired format. This is especially important when you are shown two lines on a graph and meant to think they correlate–when it actual fact they do not even share a y-scale with each other and may not be compared as such.

Now let’s repeat this exercise with 3 maps. All 3 maps here feature the same data too: we are tallying all individual contributions to candidates for House, Senate, and President, that were filed in 2020 and itemized under Schedule A. These maps detail an expenditure of just under $19,000,000,000.00. That’s 19 billion. So we’re dealing with very large figures, and also trying to paint in a useful amount of contrast for our purposes in that these maps want to show you where that money is coming from.

So what you’re seeing here are 3 alternative ways to quantize this data. Essentially, we are shading each State on this map as an expression of some ratio. Watch what happens on this map as we slide that ratio across 3 settings and you will realize that how you want to use this map is very important.

Imagine which of these 3 maps you might want to use if your advocacy is centered on the importance of Illinois. It might be that second map, where Illinois pops into the picture. You’d publish that map with your press release. Map #1 might be better if you are interested in highlighting outcomes for NY, CA, TX, and FL. Map #3 is entirely useless, and I put it there because I just wanted to show you that there definitely can be too much of a good thing with quantization. Pull hard on the ratio in the other direction and soon you’re lighting up CA and NY only or you get a map with no shading at all. There isn’t necessarily a right answer, but in consultation–there is usually an answer that is the best answer.

One of our crawlers takes in both “Unofficial” and then “Certified” election returns in NY starting right as polls close. In addition to the vote counts themselves, this dataset includes some interesting features such as how many ballots were counted by the “Public Counter”–viz. at the poll-site–or via an alternative process, such as the “Absentee / Military” mail-in balloting. In 2020, an unusual number of voters availed themselves of mail-in voting due to the pandemic.

As you stare into this map, a certain demographic reality emerges, if you know the lore in NYC.

In case you need to see the quiet part, here it is again, with an added legend:

We are seeing a pretty interesting window into civic education here, and attitudes towards voting other than in person. This is not an area of my expertise remotely, and I know that correlation is not causation, but now that we have the data, I do know that whiteness is correlated with adapting to mail-in voting in NYC, as of June 2020.

Pew found the same thing with one of their polls which they ran one month after New York’s June primary.

Likely, considerable sociological work will go into explaining the racial preferences among Biden supporters (Democrats) for adapting to mail-in voting or not. Pew found that among Trump supporters (Republicans), that there was an ideological preference instead of a racial one:

We have post-COVID ballot data on the June and November elections in New York and we believe that knowledge of how voters are voting now can help you connect with them.