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Which industries contributed the most to the Republican and Democratic parties? How much was contributed to each party?
- Answer: Republican/Conservative for the Republican Party, Media/Entertainment for the Democratic Party. $21,553,578.00 was given to the Democratic Party, while $30,749,000.00 to the Republican Party.
- How I did it
- I formatted the Amount tab to currency. Otherwise, the amount is not treated as currency, but as text.
- I created a pivot table and applied Industry as the row, Party as column, and Amount as values (as both default and % of the grand total).
- I found that Republican/Conservative was the industry that contributed the most to either of the parties. They contributed 14% or $7,514,000.00 to the Republican Party. The same group also contributed the most to the Republican Party; none of its money was donated to the Democratic Party. As for the Democratic Party, the Media/Entertainment industry was the top contributor, donating $1,880,000.00 to the party.
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How much did donors from the Misc. Business sector contribute to the Democratic party? Which donors were based in Miami Lakes, FL?
- Answer: $3,520,000.00; Windmere Corp.
- How I did it
- On the Pivot Table tab, I replaced Industry with Sector as column. I found that the Misc. Business contributed $3,520,000.00 to the Democratic Party.
- On the same Pivot Table, I used City as row and Donor as values. I found that there are only one donor from Miami Lakes, FL which donated $100,000 to the Democratic Party twice. The donor’s name is Windmere Corp.
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What percentage of the tobacco industry’s donations does Philip Morris account for? How much is it?
- Answer: 68.54%; $2,070,000.00
- How I did it
- On the Pivot Table tab, I used Industry as row and Amount as values. From the resultant table, I clicked on the Amount ($3,020,000.00) that the Tobacco industry contributed to. It created a new tab where all the donors belonging to the tobacco industry. I created another Pivot Table, where I used Donor as row and Amount as values (% of the grand total). I found that both the amount and perchantage of Philip Morris’ contributions.
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Describe (in two to three sentences — no need for a detailed story pitch) one potential story from this dataset that you’d find promising if this were a project you were working on. Give it a headline. Include up to three types of sources you would call to report out the story and a few of the questions you might ask. (These can be bullet points — no need for a long explanation.) Remember to detail the steps you took in analyzing the data to get to the story idea. Use the skills we’ve learned to help you.
- Headline: How parties helped or defied their donors; it would be an explanatory story which would try to explain whether the parties favored or defied the industries or sectors that donated them. I will analyze the parties’ voting and legislation records by the amount of money they received from each sector. I would call the Public Citizen, which keeps track of influence peddling in the government. I'd filter the amount of money parties received from different sectors and industries; and then find out the legislations involving different sectors that these parties pushed or opposed.
- What data might be suitable to join with this data to provide context or additional stories? Give me two examples.
- Congress voting records data by party lines; the donation details of each congressional candidates of the parites.