NY-21 Recap - Follow the money....

In an effort to provide a little context around the NY-21 election results I thought I'd review the vote totals and a take one last look at the influence of money on our election process.

First, a bit of a review of the voter turnout.  While I'm sure there are still votes to be counted the published totals are:

Stefanik:       90,002
Woolf:          54,704
Funiciello:    18,377

The current total vote count for the district stands at 163,083.  That would be down 34% from 2012 when over 250,000 votes were cast.  For comparisson consider that Ms. Stefanik's "big win" with 90,000 votes was almost 32,000 votes fewer than the Republican loser in 2012 Matt Doheny (he received 121k votes).

So while it is easy to draw conclusions from this vote, I'd caution that midterms tend to draw out the most dedicated voters while those that only vote in presidential elections will be back in 2016 and I'd expect 2016 to be a more competitive race.

However, the redistricting of NY-21 has materially changed the district and the Republican slant of the district is likely built in for the foreseeable future.

As of October 29, 2012, District 21 had the following partisan registration breakdown according to the New York State Board of Elections:

New York Congressional District 21[20]
Congressional District	District Total	Democrats	Republicans	Other & Unaffiliated	Advantage	Party Advantage	Change in Advantage from 2010
District 21	396,310	116,069	174,028	106,213	Republican	49.93%	111.18%

************************************************************
Money!

On the surface spending in this race seemed fairly even (with one exception that I'll get to in a minute).

The Stefanik campaign took in $1.66 million while the Woolf campaign took in $1.99 million.  However, it should be noted that Mr. Woolf's campaign appears to have ended their ad spending early and finished with $300k or so left over, so basically the spending levels were nearly identical.

This works out to roughly $18 for every vote for Ms. Stefanik and $36 for every vote for Mr. Woolf. The best bang for his buck award has to go Mr. Funiciello who managed to raise just $32k, for a cost per vote of just $1.77!

However, there is one more factor at work here via Opensecrets.org

Outside Spending

Candidates Opposed/Supported

Candidate	All 2014 Total	Last Week Total	Last 24 Hours Total	Supported	Opposed
Woolf, Aaron (D)	$877,583	$0	$0	$5,010	$872,573
Doheny, Matt (R)	$794,492	$0	$0	$250	$794,242
Stefanik, Elise (R)	$731,168	$0	$0	$731,168	$0

A total of $2.4 million was spent by Outside PACs away from the candidates formal campaigns and it was almost all pro-Stefanik or anti-her opponents.  Thus, you really have to add that money to her campaign totals which means her campaign really cost about $4 million or $45 per vote.

Both Ms. Stefanik and Mr. Woolf received about 70% of their donations from people residing outside of NY-21.  Since, Ms. Stefanik only received about $1.0 million in traditional donations it's fair to assume that about $300,000 of her $4,000.000 campaign came from people in NY-21 or 7.5% of her total campaign costs.

So, if 92.5% of a campaign is funded by people outside of a district where might your allegiances as a Congresswoman be?  Inquiring minds want to know :)

Re: Mr. Funiciello's campaign I'd say that pulling double digits without spending any real money is incredibly impressive.  The fact that he still pulled those numbers despite some questionable quotes, speaks to the desire for the third party candidate in NY-21.  This is third straight election where a third party has had an impact in this district.

*****************************************************************************
I won't post here very often but when a political matter pops up in NY-21 I'll try to address it.   If you have questions or concerns drop me a note.

Since this is a political blog please understand that I'm neither R or D.  I believe in facts and the truth and those things are hard to uncover in the political realm, but I'll give it a shot :)

Since this is the launch of a new blog please pass it around.  I won't have the readership that exists on my current financial blog so I'll need all of the support I can get to stir up interest.