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Ever suspect that there are a lot more Donald Trump supporters living on your street than the totally blue maps of New York City would seem to imply? Are you wondering if your neighbors love Hillary Clinton so much that they're planning on dressing up in pantsuits in support? Well, with the help of this interactive RentHop map, you can see by NYC zip code which pockets of the five boroughs are supporting the candidates financially.
Created by a RentHop data scientist Shane Leese, the map reflects the percentage of presidential campaign donors in each zip code that went to either Trump or Clinton. Leese used the information that is by law required to be released through the Federal Election Commission to build the map. "There’s all this data that’s free and very accurate," Leese said about his decision to look outside the traditional phone polling method, "because almost anyone who is donating to a campaign is likely voting for them."
While there's only data available for the approximately 30,000 New Yorkers who donated directly to a campaign, Leese argued that that's a larger sample size than many traditional polls use, which frequently build their maps off just a few thousand calls in an area. The information released by the FEC not only includes the zip codes of each of the donors who give directly to the campaigns, but also the dollar amount and their full address. But don't expect to see how much each of these zip codes gave on Leese's map: "I didn’t think [the dollar amount] is that relevant. Whether I give $20 and my neighbor gives $2,000, we still only each get one vote."
Few city-dwellers will be surprised to learn that Manhattan is overwhelmingly financially backing Clinton, but Trump certainly has his own pockets of support, particularly in Staten Island, South Brooklyn and on the Rockaway Peninsula. There's even a few neighborhoods, including the Ridgewood/Glendale area in Queens and Brooklyn's Borough Park/Bensonhurst area, that are pretty evenly divided. See what percentage of the donations in your zip code went to your preferred candidate in the map below, and don't forget to vote in NYC!
The polls are open! Vote for your favorite spots that deserve a Love New York Award.