Edit: The source for the donations data is opensecrets.org; the source for the personal income data is the BEA.
Chart of the Day (edited)
A Classical Liberal Blog on Political Science, Economics, Philosophy, Law, and More
A Classical Liberal Blog on Political Science, Economics, Philosophy, Law, and More
Edit: The source for the donations data is opensecrets.org; the source for the personal income data is the BEA.
So New Mexico has a surge because of Johnson, obviously. A slight bump in Vermont, North Dakota, and Maine. Everything else pretty close to trend?
New Hampshire really keeps jumping out in these surveys. I don’t know about locally, but nationally I’m not seeing any major impact of the Free State Project so far in its congressional politics. I wonder why.
I see a bit of a surge in Mississippi too, although it’s way down there. As you say, with New Mexico it’s the Gary Johnson effect; he’s raised almost as much money as Ron Paul there, compared to about 15 times less than Paul nationally.
New Hampshire’s top-line political makeup is still characterized on the left-right dimension as slightly left of center. The FSP hasn’t changed that, and it would take a few thousand more Free Staters, at minimum, to have an observable effect on that. But the main point of the FSP isn’t influencing federal politics in any case. The FSP is effective at the state and local level because left-right ideology matters less than name recognition and work ethic. As far as the state house goes, the parties are always scrambling for candidates and grateful for whomever they can get. If you put a couple thousand dollars and a good bit of shoe leather into your race, you can win whatever your ideology may be. (However, it has been harder so far to do this as a Democrat than as a Republican. Only one Free Stater has been successful as a Democrat.)
I see Mississippi too, I wonder if there’s something behind that. Given the small money haul of Gary Johnson I can imagine that one particularly wealthy individual/family can skew things a lot.
Is there any measurement at the state and local level that could measure the impact of the FSP, even if the top-line is still left of center?
See here: https://pileusblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/statistical-estimates-of-the-future-impact-of-the-free-state-project/
But that’s a bit speculative and requires some assumptions about correlations implying causation. The trouble is we have a single case, and it’s hard to get valid inferences from a single case.