(This article was originally published at EconBS, and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)
Tomorrow, March 8th, Michigan with 130 delegates gets to vote one which of the Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders should be the Democratic presidential nominee. Michigan is an important state because is represents a large number of delegates.
Michigan has a also been in the news frequently this election season with the poisoning of water in Flint as a result of changes in how the city sources its water. Both democratic candidates have spent a considerable time in the state.
In a recent post I predicted outcomes within states based on the proportion of contributions within those states which have given to either the Sanders campaign or the Clinton campaign. Based on the donor rates within Michigan I predicted a 65% share of the vote would go to Sanders.
As Clinton has adopted a "stay the course", Obama 2.0, campaign strategy, Democrats in Michigan may be more likely to vote for her relative to Democrats in other parts of the country who have not seen the recent growth rates Michigan has experienced.
From Figure 1 we can see that by just looking at the number of contributions coming in by county we would expect Michigan to strongly support Bernie Sanders. However, population density is not well captured by county maps. We can see though that there is a strong level of support in the areas surrounding Detroit for both candidates.
We can see that in terms of total number of contributions, Sanders is strongly outraising Clinton in Michigan by a factor of 2 to 1. However, as has been noted previously, large/wealthy donors disproportionately back Hillary Clinton above all other candidates. When it comes to large sponsors giving more than $1000 to Clinton in Michigan, she has hundreds while Sanders has 15 (too few to appear on the figure).
Though these contributions represent a small proportion of the total contributions to either candidate they do represent a large portion for the total funds contributed in Michigan. From Figure 2, we can see that those few large contributors make up a large portion of the funds donated in the state.
Who are these large donors?
Like the country at large, business executives and lawyers are Clinton's largest backers while health care workers, engineers, artists, academics, and the self-employed form a broad coalition of support for Sanders.
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Michigan has a also been in the news frequently this election season with the poisoning of water in Flint as a result of changes in how the city sources its water. Both democratic candidates have spent a considerable time in the state.
In a recent post I predicted outcomes within states based on the proportion of contributions within those states which have given to either the Sanders campaign or the Clinton campaign. Based on the donor rates within Michigan I predicted a 65% share of the vote would go to Sanders.
As Clinton has adopted a "stay the course", Obama 2.0, campaign strategy, Democrats in Michigan may be more likely to vote for her relative to Democrats in other parts of the country who have not seen the recent growth rates Michigan has experienced.
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| Figure 1: A map of counties supporting Sanders or Clinton. Donations are mapped to zip code level. Zoom to larger map to see donations indicated as either S for Sanders or C for Clinton. Size of letters correspond to number of donations from that zip code. |
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| Figure 2: Number of contributions in Michigan by contribution size for both candidates Clinton and Sanders.Note that because the majority of funds are too small to itemize, these estimates underestimates the total funds contributed for Sanders by 70-80% while underestimating funds contributed to Clinton by only 10-20%. |
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| Figure 3: Total itemized funds contributed by contribution size. Note that because the majority of funds are too small to itemize, these estimates underestimates the total funds contributed for Sanders by 70-80% while underestimating funds contributed to Clinton by only 10-20%. |
Who are these large donors?
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| Figure 4: Industrial backing of donors in Michigan. |
Related Articles:
Clinton's Lack of Public Support Made up by Super-PACs
Analysis: Clinton backed by Big Money: Sanders by Small
Overwhelming Growth In National Support for Bernie Sanders Mapped
Big Business Backs Hillary: Small Bernie
Hillary 1993: Largest Drop in Girl Names EVER; Chelsea Distant Second
As First Lady, Popularity of Babies Named "Hillary" Dropped by an Unprecedented 90%
Hillary Clinton's Biggest 2016 Rival: Herself
The Simple Reason Sanders Is Winning
Cause of Death: Melanin | Evaluating Death-by-Police Data
Obama 2008 received 3x more media coverage than Sanders 2016
The Unreported War On America's Poor
What it means to be a US Veteran Today
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