Visualizations : Spending

Is “Media” what a layperson would call “advertising”? And is “Voter Contact” the same as “calling and writing to ask for money”?

See also this visualization of the same data:

Mitt Romney is, by far, the leader of media/polling/voter contact spending.

Whereas Hillary seems to focus a lot more on events.

Sorry for being slow on the uptake. “Media” in this case is a very, very broad category that includes money for any kind of advertising, phone banks, polling operations as well as a slew of other voter-contact related activities — everything from T-shirts to lawn signs. The problem with FEC data is that it doesn’t break out specific expenditures for specific things. For example, there is no way to say how much a candidate is spending on advertising versus direct mail versus phone banks. I wish there were. So, the best I could do was group together all the expenditures on items related to reaching out to voters (whether that is by phone, mail or broadcast TV/radio).

Thank-you, Martin Wattenberg, for the alternative view of the same info. I found it interesting to see in that view that the various candidates spent about the same on travel whereas Mitt Romney has spent a lot more on media – meaning, most likely, that he has bought more advertising time.

Thanks for a very interesting multiple pie-chart based visualization. You have captured lots of information on a single chart. If you would like to explore the “spatial dimensions” of the spending at zipcode level by major party candidates, please check the following …

Giuliani campaign spending map
http://www.geocommons.com/workspace/show/5531

Giuliani campaign spending data by zipcode: Jan-Sep, 2007
http://www.geocommons.com/data_set/show/7440

Clinton campaign spending map
http://www.geocommons.com/workspace/show/5530

Clinton campaign spending by zipcode: Jan-Sep, 2007
http://www.geocommons.com/data_set/show/7439

Romney campaign spending map
http://www.geocommons.com/workspace/show/5529

Romney campaign spending by zipcode: Jan-Sep, 2007d
http://www.geocommons.com/data_set/show/7444