Kevin W. Collins
Last June, Kevin Collins and I co-wrote a post on measuring the ideology of the Republican presidential field. At the time, many of the candidates had yet to enter the race or had recently entered. In lieu of current FEC records for these candidates, we relied on past donations raised by those candidates’ congressional or gubernatorial campaigns to estimate their positions. Thanks to the recent FEC filing deadline, there is now enough data available to re-estimate positions based solely on contributions
In the previous version of the figure, the y-axis measured the proportion of dollars raised from small donors, which revealed a relationship between small donors and ideological extremism. In this version, the y-axis plots the proportion of funds raised from pro-life versus pro-choice sources. I calculate this by first identifying the subset of contributors in the database that have given to one of the many PACs or ballot measures that specifically advocates a pro-life or pro-choice cause. I then classify e
y = ($ raised from pro-life donors) / ($ raised from pro-life donors + $ raised from pro-choice donors).
Kevin W. Collins