Election for Sale by Keir Clarke.
MapD’s US Political Donations map allows you to explore the donations made to the Democratic and Republican parties dating back to 2001. The map includes a number of tools which allow you to filter the map by political party, by recipient and by date.
After filtering the map by party and date you can explore details of the donations received using the markers on the map. If you select the colored markers on the map you can view details on the amount of the donation, the name of the recipient & recipient’s party and the name of the donor. It is also possible to share a link to your personally filtered map.
The MapD blog has used the map to pick out a number of interesting stories that emerge from the map. These stories include an analysis of the types of donations received by both Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump.
An appropriate story for November 7th, the day prior to the U.S. Government sale day, November 8th.
It’s a great map but that isn’t to say it could not be enhanced by merging in other data.
While everyone acknowledges donations, especially small ones, are made for a variety of reasons, consistent and larger donations are made with an expectation of something in return.
One feature this map is missing is what did consistent and larger donors get in return?
Harder to produce and maintain than a map based on public campaign donation records but far more valuable to the voting public.
Imagine that level of transparency for the tawdry story of Hillary Clinton and Big Oil. How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Fought For Oil 5,000 Miles Away.
Apparent Browser Incompatibility: The MapD map loads fine with Firefox (49.0.2) but crashes with Chrome (Version 54.0.2840.90 (64-bit)) (Failed to load dashboard. TypeError: Cannot read property ‘resize’ of undefined). Both on Ubuntu 14.04.