Roanoke, Shenandoah Valley, Southwest, and the 23229 Zip Code Keeping Gillespie in the Race

Graphic credit: Virginia Public Access Project

According to Virginia Public Access Project data, Democratic candidate for governor Ralph Northam has raised 50% more money than Republican Ed Gillespie — and almost 30 times more than Libertarian Cliff Hyra. The map above shows the distribution of in-state dollars by region. (Drill down by region and you can see the contribution count broken down by zip code.) The in-state contributions are a better reflection of Virginia voter sentiment than money totals that include out-of-state dough.

As is readily visible from the map, the east-west divide is pronounced. The Roanoke region, Southwest Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley lean to Gillespie. The rest of the state leans to Northam. Look at the data by zip code, though, and the picture is less uniform. Here’s a map of the Richmond region.

I was surprised to see how dominant Northam is in the Richmond region, which has a reputation — decreasingly deserved with each election — of leaning Republican and conservative. But the map is somewhat deceptive. I checked out my zip code, 23229 (seen in the yellow circle), in western Henrico County. Not only is 23229 one of the biggest-donating zips in the state, it leans to Gillespie by a nine-to-one margin.

Inhabitants of my zip chipped in $1,260,000 to the Gillespie campaign, versus $125,000 for Northam. That’s one-quarter of Gillespie’s entire in-state campaign take — and more than that vast swath of red west of the Blue Ridge. Remarkably, as far as I know, Gillespie has never visited the district (unless he appeared at discrete fund-raisers in private homes). He’d be well advised to come and shake that money tree as hard as he can.

Update: And how many votes will these campaign expenditures buy? Well, it depends on how much the campaigns devote to advertising. And the effect of advertising is just about zero. Literally, zero. From am upcoming publication in the American Political Science Review by Joshua L. Kalla and David E. Broockman. “We argue that the best estimate of the effects of campaign contact and advertising on Americans’ candidates choices in general elections is zero. … A systematic meta-analysis of 40 field experiments estimates an average effect of zero in general elections.”