Patrick Ruffini has analyzed where Ron Paul’s contributions are coming from and reaches some interesting conclusions:
This really is a Western movement, with some of the Northeast thrown in. Basically, these are the places where you would expect libertarians to be strong. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a data set this good about the state-by-state strength of libertarianism. And the data gets more reliable every day .
The Paul movement is weakest in the Deep South and the Ohio River Valley. Ohio (and surprisingly New York) are Paul’s weakest big states.
The differences are also fairly dramatic. One is 4 times more likely to be a Ron Paul donor in Nevada than in Mississippi. And more than twice as likely in blue Washington state than in blue New York. Alaska and Hawaii, which are not on the map, would also be colored the darkest shade of red.
But words only tell part of the story, here’s the picture:
Stuart Benjamin at The Volokh Conspiracy makes this comment about Paul’s geographic support:
His campaign contributions are spread out quite evenly (he’s done better in Texas than elsewhere, which is not surprising, but his Texas total is only three times his haul from the state of Washington and a bit smaller than funds from California). And his receipts come from all over. Indeed, and perhaps unsurprisingly, he does better in smaller states, which may have a higher percentag of people who lean libertarian. He has received more money from North Dakota, for example, than either Romney or Giuliani. You can decide for yourself whether this means we should consider him to be the only candidate with a true 50-state appeal, or the candidate for people in sparsely populated and over-represented (in the Senate) states.
And among those sparsely populated states that Ruffini’s map shows as a deep red is New Hampshire. A sign of things to come, or just a blip on the radar ?
Given the way the primary calender is accelerating, we’ll probably know in about two months.
