Why do delegates spend the way they do?

I want to look into whether or not there are any factors that lead to delegates in the United States government spending more or less money than others. I am going to answer the question of why the highest spending delegates are spending more money than their lowest spending counterparts. I first want to look at which states and territories have delegates with the highest spending habits.

The first most interesting thing to see is that the highest and lowest spending amongst delegates are in United States Territories and not actual states in the union. It is also interesting to see how the states with the most spending per delegate seem to be some of the smaller and some of the more sparsely populated states in the country. Because of this seeming trend I decided to look into population data to see if spending has any correlation with the number of people in the state.

This chart shows the population of every United States territory and state in the tens of millions of people. It is interesting to see that at a first glance the graphs seem to have almost inverse ordering. The states that had some of the highest per delegate spending habits were the same states that have the lower populations. This could be because the delegates in the less populated states are spending more because they have less delegates per area meaning higher budgeting for them versus the more populated states. Another explanation could be that political parties have an effect on the increased or decreased spending. Looking at the average spending per unit of the delegates could provide more information on whether or not this affects the spending habits.

This chart shows the averaging spending per unit for each political party in the United States. This is interesting because if you refer to the first graphic you can see that many states that are considered Republican are some of the highest spending states per delegate. Despite this delegates from the republican party tend to spend less on average per spending trip. This makes sense because some of the highest populated states are the states that would be considered democratic states. Next I wanted to look into if there were any delegates in particular that spent much more than other delegates.

This chart shows the ten lowest spending delegates. It is interesting to see that the lowest spending delegate is Jake Ellzey of Texas. He spends around half as much as the next lowest spender sitting around 125,000 dollars. The next lowest spender is sitting around $200,000 annually. The second lowest spender is James Baird of Indiana which makes sense since Indiana is one of the states with the lowest overall spending. After James Baird is Scott Fitzgerald. Scott Fitzgerald is a representative from Wisconsin which also checks out as it is one of the lower spending states overall. Next I wanted to look into who the highest spending delegates are and see if there is any explanation for why.

The above chart shows that Gary Palmer is the highest spending delegate. Gary Palmer is a delegate from Alabama. This checks out as Alabama has the tenth highest overall spending from delegates. Running this data alongside Alabama’s population does raise some questions. Alabama is right around the middle of the pile when it comes to state population. If you consider that delegate spending should more or less reflect the population of the state it starts to become peculiar that the highest spending delegate is from one of the lower populated states. The second highest spending delegate is Randy Feenstra from Iowa. His spending seems to check out with all the observed patterns seen before. Iowa is right around the bottom third of states in terms of population, but it is in the top 10 spending states right ahead of Alabama. It is interesting that states with republican delegates and low populations seem to be spending the most money overall as well as the most money with individual delegates. The third highest spending delegate is Joyce Beatty representing Ohio. She is the only democrat in the top three spending delegates and comes from Ohio, one of the most populated states and also one of the lowest spending states per delegate. It is interesting that the first person to have spending habits that seem to correlate with their representative population is a democratic representative from Ohio.