Unfluence.primate.net - Mapping Political Contributions

The upcoming elections means that large quantities of money are being thrown about as candidates try to gain a foothold in the hearts of American tax payers. Unfluence is a new web application which traces the money trail.

It takes contribution data and builds network maps linking political parties, contributors and recipients. Items are represented as following: circles indicate a political candidate running for office; green circles correspond to their contributors; grey arrows signify the direction and size of the money flow while the size of each node or circle is in direction proportion to the total amount given/received. Each graph may be downloaded and linked to. The statistics are derived from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a non profit organization which documents and researches campaign finance.

Unfluence provides an interesting visualization of the political money flow. It makes campaign financing a little more transparent and accessible. People who aren’t politically savvy can look at the maps and get a quick idea of what’s what.

While this site endeavours to make politics and contributions more transparent, all the circles, nodes and lines are difficult to discern. Your casual political observer won’t be able to make anything out. It’s rather confusing and non-edifying.

“Unfluence is a web program that generates interactive network maps of state level political contribution data. Circles indicate candidates running for a political office. Green circles represent their contributors. Gray arrows (a.k.a "links" or "edges") indicate the size and direction of contributions (thicker arrows mean more $.) The size of the circles ("nodes" or "vertices") is proportional to the total amount given or received. Modifying the query selects different groups of candidates and ranges of edges to be included when building the network.”

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