One of the best indicators of support for a candidate is donations. And in the case of the city council election it is the only hard data we have as there are no polls, etc. I think number of contributors is a bigger indicator than total dollars so the candidates are sorted in order of number of contributors.
I do not include self contributions and I do not include matching funds as those just magnify the numbers for the more successful candidates. I also may have some numbers off slightly - this is from the postings on the City's site which is scanned in paper that I have to read sideways.
So what can we get from this?
- Anyone to the right of Eugene (with the exception of Shawn) probably doesn't have a chance.
- The 3 Board of Realtors endorsees clearly get a lot of $100.00 contributors.
- Susan O, Macon, Lisa, & Eric have by far the strongest support in terms of number of contributors. For Susan & Lisa this probably means they've got it. Macon & Eric both have high negatives too so they're clearly competitive but I don't think they can assume anything.
- Matt and Crystal are surprisingly low here. Way below expected. They may be in serious trouble.
- And speaking of graphs, hat-trick to whoever at the Boulder County Clerk & Recorders office providing this graph. Very well done.
Money isn't everything (unless your name is Anna Nicole Smith). Endorsements count for a lot. As do friends and associates in the community. And there do seem to be a growing number of people that use the web to make an independent choice (at least based on the web traffic this site gets).
But it is an awfully good indicator...
