Party Affiliation

For my analysis, I looked at the 435 congressional districts in the United States plus the
District of Columbia, but excluded Puerto Rico and foreign stimulus recipients such as
Canada and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The average number of awards per district is 148,
and the average dollar amount awarded per district is $385,932,979.

In the United States there are 177 districts represented by a Republican and 259
represented by a Democrat. On average, Democratic districts received 1.53 times the
amount of awards that Republicans were granted. The average number of awards per
Republican district is 112, while the average number of awards per Democratic district is
171.

Democratic districts also received 2.65 times the amount of stimulus dollars that
Republican districts received $122 billion vs. $46 billion). Republican districts also
received smaller awards on average. The average dollars awarded per Republican district
is $26 million, while the average dollars awarded per Democratic district is about $472
million. In total, Democratic districts received 73 percent of the total stimulus funds
awarded and Republican districts received 27 percent of the total amount awarded.

Other Political Variables

Regression analysis (ordinary least squares) was used to explore the predictive power of
the various indicators described in the section above. The political variables considered
here included the district representative‘s political party, tenure in office, leadership
position, membership on the appropriations committee, and voting in the most recent
presidential elections, as well as the inclusion of the state‘s capital within that district.
The analysis finds that a district‘s representation by a Republican decreases the stimulus
funds awarded to it by 27.9 percent. This result underscores the findings from the
previous Stimulus Facts report.

This effect is statistically significant at the p < .015 level (see table 1). The regression
analysis does not seek to explain (nor does it explain) precisely how funds were allocated
(adjusted R2 = .400). That would require a more complete dataset than has been used for
these results or is available through Recovery.gov. That is, I wanted to know how much
political and economic factors could explain the distribution of funds. That is different
from saying I want to know all of the factors that control the spending of the funds. I do
not have that data nor is it particularly interesting for this purpose. I have confidence that
these estimates of the selected indicators are robust, although I do not know how other,
yet unknown, indicators may have influenced stimulus funding decisions. The political
calculation shows that there is no statistically significant effect of a district‘s voting
outcome in the 2008 presidential elections.

Concretely, while $109 billion has been awarded to congressional districts that voted for
President Obama (or 65 percent of the total amount allocated), $59 billion (or 35 percent)
have been allocated to congressional districts that voted for McCain. It should be noted,
however, that there were many more congressional districts that voted for Obama than
voted for McCain. President Obama won 55.6 percent of congressional districts and
McCain won 44.4 percent of these districts.

The districts that voted for President Obama received 40,037 awards (or 69 percent of the
total number of awards allocated), much more than the districts that voted for candidate
McCain; they received 24,483 awards (or 31 percent of the total number of awards).

The average awarded to marginal districts—districts with votes that did not vote
overwhelmingly for one candidate or another (5 percent or less difference)—is $22
million. That‘s significantly less than the average awarded to non-marginal districts of
$419 million.