Two Maps Show How the U.S. is Donating to the 2016 Candidates

The 2016 money race is well underway. Jeb Bush has a commanding lead with nearly $120 million raised as of July 31st. When super PACs are taken out of the equation, Hillary Clinton leads the race with over $47 million in direct campaign contributions.

How do these political donations play out on a national scale? Using the most recent data from the Federal Election Commission, InsideGov broke down the individual donations from each state by party.

The visualization below shows the percentage of individual donations that went to Republican campaign committees.

As the map shows, Wyoming residents have donated most consistently to Republicans, with 87% of campaign contributions going to GOP candidates. On the other end of the spectrum, Vermont is the most solidly blue state, with only 8% of the state's donations going to Republican candidates.

While the country is almost evenly split between Republican and Democratic campaign donations, the picture is more lopsided when super PACs are considered. The map below shows the percentage of each state's contributions to Republican candidate super PACs. Only donations greater than $10,000 are considered in the super PAC percentages.

Republicans dominate when it comes to super PACs. In fact, there are 29 states where 100% of the large super PAC contributions have gone to Republican candidates. Part of the reason is that only two Democratic candidates actually have super PACs (Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley), whereas each of the 17 GOP candidates has at least one PAC. The ratio is so skewed that even states like Utah and Tennessee, which have purple shading, are still predominantly donating to Republican candidate super pacs.

The presence of super PACs, which have no limits on donations, is a contested issue in American politics. Already, super PACs have raised more than double the amount of the candidates' individual campaigns. Will the prevalence of super PACs carry the GOP to the White House?

Compare Every Candidate's Finances on InsideGov