How Do The Congressional Districts Of Colorado Spend Their Money?
Colorado is the state I call home. I was born in California and moved here when I was baby. And here I have stayed ever since. Despite not being a natural born citizen of Colorado, I believe myself to be a Coloradan. Coming from the highly conservative city of Colorado Springs and living in the highly liberal city of Boulder, I am privy to the political opinions of all facets of the political body. Some of my friends belong to the fringe groups. Some are gun-toting, anti-government libertarians, while others are communists. But in the middle of this wide spectrum are the gung ho republicans and democrats. Falling somewhere in the middle, I often find myself teetering the edge between political ideologies. I am a firm believer of voting for policy instead of party. Having such a belief system has rendered onto me the not-so-unique ability to criticize the political decisions of elected leaders. However, as a Coloradan, I am frequently immersed in the political drama surrounding my state. For example, there is a certain controversial congresswoman who has made a fair share of… strange… comments. This aforementioned drama, while being an odd mix of hilarity, disgust, and concern, has me asking myself about the various aspects of the political figures we, as Coloradans, must put up with. After being introduced to a dataset containing all the expenditures of a wide range of congresspeople for the third quarter of the year 2021, I set about comparing the various spending habits of the congresspeople specific to Colorado. How do they compare? Who spends the most? Who spends the least? To which party do they affiliate with? These questions are to be answered over the course of this analysis.
To understand the congressional layout of this great state, one must look no further than the map above.There are seven districts each roughly containing 710,000 people. A red colored district indicates a district occupied by a Republican congressperson, a blue colored district indicates that a Democratic congressperson holds the office. Currently 4 districts are occupied by Democrats and 3 districts are occupied by Republicans. Below you will find a chart containing the congressperson and their affiliated districts and political parties.
District 1 (CO01) — Diana DeGette — Democrat
District 2 (CO02) — Joe Neguse — Democrat
District 3 (CO03) — Lauren Boebert — Republican
District 4 (CO04) — Ken Buck — Republican
District 5 (CO05) — Doug Lamborn — Republican
District 6 (CO06) — Jason Crow — Democrat
District 7 (CO07) — Ed Perlmutter — Democrat
While analyzing the dataset containing the unfiltered list of all expenditures of all the congresspeople across the nation. It is important to note that each row in the dataset represents a unique expenditure. I located just the data related to Colorado and siphoned it off into a new dataset. From there I grouped the data by district and aggregated on the amount spent by summing the total number of expenditures. By doing this, I had created a chart of each district and the amount they spent in the third quarter of 2021. After plotting the data on a bar graph, I got this:
As you can see, districts 1 and 7 seem to have spent a great deal of money in comparison to the other districts. Coming somewhere in the middle are districts 6 and 2. Then spending is the least in districts 3, 4, and 5, all of the Republican held districts.
It was clear to me that spending was higher in Democratic districts, however I needed to know if this difference was statistically significant. In order to figure this out, I ran a t-test and determined that the difference between Democratic districts and Republican is indeed statistically significant (t=2.83, p-value=<0.05). This result was expected, however that begs the question, what are the Democrats spending all that money on?
To answer this question, I found the total amount spent on various categories of expenditures. I found that the most significant differences in amounts spent between Democrats and Republicans were expenditures in the categories of equipment, mailing, personal compensation, and rent communication utilities (cell phones and communication equipment) were all categories in which Democrats spent a lot more money than Republicans. One area of interest was that Republicans vastly surpassed Democrats in travel expenses. My personal theory is that given Republican districts are much larger than Democrat districts, it’s possible that Republicans spend more on gasoline and automobile maintenance due to increased driving distances between work, home, and other business related destinations.
Overall, the differences in spending habits between Republican districts and Democratic districts is significant, but for reasons unknown. My friends in Colorado Springs would say, “It’s because the Democrats just throw money at everything!” and my friends in Boulder would say, “It’s because the Republicans don’t pay their workers!” In the end however, my speculations as to what my friends would say are just that: Speculations. Without further analysis and a greater breakdown of government expenditures as well as a deeper dive into the working structure of each of our congresspeople, the truth will never be known.
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