Are Fort Greene And Clinton Hill Feeling The Bern? FEC Filings Show Strong Support In Our Area

It appears that Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Wallabout are “Feeling the Bern” pretty strongly.

This observation comes courtesy of a cool new dataset that was just released by Renthop, which looks at contributions to presidential candidates — by zip code — across the New York City metro area. The data shows that two out of the three zip codes in our area — 11238 and 11205 — are leaning heavily toward Bernie Sanders in terms of number of unique donors.

However, Hillary Clinton comes out on top in all three zip codes in terms of the total amount donated.

These trends pretty much match the state-wide trends: data shows Sanders has a “strong” presence in New York State with 7,830 unique donors contributing $2.3 million, but Clinton — the former junior U.S. Senator from New York — raised $21.8 million from 12,488 different donors.

Before we move on to showing you the fun data and charts, though, a few points to note:

• Renthop’s data comes from the most recent — as of February 20th, 2016 — Federal Election Commission (FEC) campaign disclosure filings. There were just over 1.17 million documented contributions, totaling nearly $300 million for all the candidates’ campaigns, they report.
• Sanders is the candidate “most affected by the lack of data from donations under $200, so one should assume his supporters are being drastically underrepresented here.”

You can check the data out for yourself, but here’s what we’ve noticed in our area:

Zip code 11217 was the only one of our local zip codes where Hillary Clinton inched past Bernie Sanders in number of donors, with 50.5 percent of political donors giving over $117,000 to her camp. Only 44.3 percent of donors here gave over $38,000 to Sanders, and a single donor gave $100 to Ted Cruz’s campaign.

Interestingly, although this zip code had the smallest percentage of donors to Sanders, those 93 donors gave the most money (compared to our other two zip codes) to his campaign.

This area spans Fort Greene, as well part of Park Slope and a bit of Boerum Hill.

56.5 percent of donors in zip code 11238 donated $25,185.05 to the Sanders campaign, while 39 percent of donors gave over $76,882 to Clinton’s campaign. And two donors gave $435 to Ted Cruz’s coffers.

This area covers the neighborhoods of Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, and a bit of Fort Greene.

Sanders seems to have received the largest percentage of donors (54.3 percent, 38 donors) and the smallest amount of donations ($9,571.48) from residents of 11205. Clinton receives over $21,000 form 37.1 percent of local donors. And Donald Trump finally made an appearance, thanks to one donor of $500 to his campaign.

Zip code 11205 encompasses Wallabout, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Farragut Houses/Vinegar Hill, and the northern parts of Clinton Hill and Fort Greene.

What do you think about this data from Renthop? Does it reflect what you are hearing in your neighborhood?