crowdpac-blog

[crowdpac-blog]

Selma 2015: Every Member of Congress on Civil Rights, ranked

For the 50th anniversary of the Selma march, we analyzed Congressional floor records, official websites and Twitter feeds to produce a Civil Rights intensity league table - a combination of how liberal or conservative Members of Congress are on Civil Rights, and how vocal they are on the subject.

Those at the top of the list are the biggest champions of Civil Rights; all Members of Congress are ranked 1 through 518 (there are 17 Members of Congress for whom we couldn't find reliable data). Use Command+F (or CTRL+F) to look up a specific name.

Al Green

John Lewis

Charles B. Rangel

Tony Cardenas

Gregory Meeks

Judy Chu

Joyce Beatty

Joseph Crowley

Terri Sewell

Loretta Sanchez

Barbara Lee

Donald Norcross

Grace Meng

Robert Menendez

Alan Lowenthal

Norma Torres

Alma Adams

James Patrick Jim McGovern

Lois Frankel

John Conyers Jr.

Xavier Becerra

Bonnie Watson Coleman

Benjamin Cardin

Seth Moulton

Eliot Engel

Karen Bass

Adam Schiff

James Clyburn

Mike Honda

Danny K. Davis

Chris Coons

Sheila Jackson Lee

Eddie Bernice Johnson

Kathleen M. Rice

Mark DeSaulnier

Elijah Cummings

Kyrsten Sinema

Hank Johnson

Yvette Clarke

Corrine Brown

Carolyn Maloney

Sander Levin

Betty McCollum

Peter Visclosky

Debbie Dingell

Ed Perlmutter

Bennie Thompson

Don Beyer

G.K. Butterfield

Brad Sherman

Tulsi Gabbard

Bobby Rush

Brendan Boyle

Jerrold Nadler

Sanford D. Bishop Jr.

Nancy Pelosi

Mazie Hirono

Bill Nelson

Janice Hahn

Brenda Lawrence

Dan Kildee

Joe Donnelly

Steny Hoyer

Frederica Wilson

Emanuel Cleaver

Joaquin Castro

Ted Deutch

Zoe Lofgren

Mark Takano

Albio Sires

Hakeem Jeffries

Jim Costa

Joseph Kennedy III

Anna Eshoo

William Lacy Clay

Janice Schakowsky

Dick Durbin

John Delaney

Marcia Fudge

Robin Kelly

William Keating

David Scott

Elizabeth Warren

Harry Reid

Frank Pallone

Sam Farr

Daniel Lipinski

Steve Cohen

Christopher Murphy

Marc Veasey

Donna Edwards

Brian Higgins

Tammy Baldwin

Pete Aguilar

Elizabeth Esty

Gwen Moore

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Michael Capuano

Patrick Murphy

Keith Ellison

Tim Ryan

Juan Vargas

Donald Payne Jr.

David Cicilline

Kirsten Gillibrand

Marcy Kaptur

Richard Blumenthal

Brad Ashford

Patrick Leahy

Rosa DeLauro

Mike Quigley

Barbara Mikulski

Maxine Waters

Al Franken

Ami Bera

Chris Van Hollen

Andre Carson

Robert Brady

Suzan DelBene

Denny Heck

Bob Casey

Steve Israel

Earl Blumenauer

Barbara Boxer

Jeanne Shaheen

David Price

Scott Peters

John Garamendi

Gary Peters

Michael F. Doyle

Tammy Duckworth

Tim Kaine

Cheri Bustos

Gerald Connolly

Henry Cuellar

Eric Swalwell

Jackie Speier

Jim McDermott

Filemon Vela

Raul Ruiz

Ted Lieu

Sherrod Brown

Brian Schatz

Dutch Ruppersberger

Kathy Castor

Raul Grijalva

Sean Maloney

Rick Nolan

Luis Gutierrez

Mark Pocan

Jim Cooper

Heidi Heitkamp

Lloyd Doggett

Sheldon Whitehouse

Charles Schumer

Annie Kuster

Ron Kind

Suzanne Bonamici

Bill Pascrell

John Larson

Lucille Roybal-Allard

Louise Slaughter

Dianne Feinstein

Collin Peterson

Derek Kilmer

John Yarmuth

James R. Langevin

Joe Courtney

Richard Neal

Gene Green

Peter DeFazio

Mike Thompson

John Sarbanes

Jared Huffman

Bill Foster

Adam Smith

Ed Markey

Ruben Hinojosa

Debbie Stabenow

Chaka Fattah

Robert C. Scott

Joe Manchin

Paul Tonko

Jared Polis

Doris Matsui

Ron Wyden

Patty Murray

Jeff Alan Merkley

Julia Brownley

Susan Davis

Dina Titus

Rick Larsen

Cedric Richmond

Stephen Lynch

Matt Cartwright

Michelle Lujan Grisham

Bernie Sanders

Jack Reed

Lois Capps

Martin Heinrich

Linda Sanchez

Jon Tester

Grace Napolitano

Thomas Carper

Nicola Niki Dickson Sauvage Tsongas

Alan Grayson

Tom Udall

Mark R. Warner

Gwen Graham

Nita Lowey

Diana DeGette

Tim Walz

Michael Bennet

Jim Himes

Chellie Pingree

Claire McCaskill

Ann Kirkpatrick

Dave Loebsack

Jerry McNerney

Nydia Velazquez

Maria Cantwell

Amy Klobuchar

Beto O'Rourke

Peter Welch

John C. Carney Jr.

Kurt Schrader

Ben Ray Lujan

Angus King

Chris Smith

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

Edward Royce

Trent Franks

David Valadao

Ted Cruz

Mario Diaz-Balart

Jim Bridenstine

David Rouzer

Robert J. Dold

Dana Rohrabacher

Mia Love

Tom Cotton

Dan Newhouse

David Brat

Mark Kirk

Marco Rubio

John McCain

Mike Rounds

Garret Graves

Martha McSally

Alex Mooney

Gary Palmer

Joseph R. Pitts

Joe Wilson

John Hoeven

Joni Ernst

Lindsey Graham

Ben Sasse

Mitch McConnell

Randy Weber

Mimi Walters

Steve Russell

Jody Hice

James E. Risch

Steve Chabot

Evan Jenkins

John Moolenaar

Gus Bilirakis

John Ratcliffe

Sam Graves

Michael Grimm

Peter King

Stephen Knight

Ryan Zinke

Frank Guinta

Kay Granger

Mike Bishop

Lee Zeldin

John Shimkus

Mike Bost

Todd Rokita

Tom MacArthur

Brad Wenstrup

Patrick Meehan

Bruce Poliquin

Austin Scott

Ken Buck

Michael McCaul

Luke Messer

Rick Crawford

Jeff Sessions

Thad Cochran

Billy Long

Lamar Alexander

Ryan Costello

George Holding

Rick Allen

John Cornyn

Brian Babin

Chris Stewart

Mike Rogers

Kevin Yoder

Jackie Walorski

Roy Blunt

Frank D. Lucas

Jeff Fortenberry

Jim Inhofe

Ted Poe

Lynn Jenkins

Roger Wicker

Garland Andy Barr

Robert Aderholt

Ann Wagner

Kristi Noem

Vicky Hartzler

Jerry Moran

Robert Pittenger

Tim Walberg

Roger Williams

Doug Lamborn

Tom Graves

Adrian Smith

Stephen Lee Fincher

John Katko

Barbara Comstock

John Boehner

Richard Shelby

Jeff Duncan

Rodney Davis

Bill Flores

Steven Palazzo

John Mica

Candice Miller

Orrin Hatch

Steve King

Mike Pompeo

Tom Rice

Lynn Westmoreland

Jeb Hensarling

Tom Price

Larry Bucshon

Susan Brooks

Virginia Foxx

Tom McClintock

Jeff Miller

Glenn Thompson

Randy Forbes

Markwayne Mullin

John Barrasso

Renee Ellmers

Will Hurd

Scott Perry

Scott Garrett

Kenny Marchant

Jim Jordan

Elise Stefanik

Doug Collins

Lou Barletta

Patrick T. McHenry

Rod Blum

Bob Corker

Rand Paul

Louie Gohmert

John Boozman

Peter Roskam

John Thune

Thomas Massie

John J. Duncan

Martha Roby

Johnny Isakson

Jim Renacci

Alan Nunnelee

Scott Rigell

Deb Fischer

Dan Coats

Robert Hurt

Morgan Griffith

Thom Tillis

Daniel Webster

Ron DeSantis

William F. Shuster

Scott R. Tipton

Ander Crenshaw

Ralph Abraham

Kevin Cramer

Blake Farenthold

Richard Hanna

Mike Lee

French Hill

Ted Yoho

George Joseph Mike Kelly

Hal Rogers

Pete Sessions

Steve Scalise

David Schweikert

Jim Sensenbrenner

Bruce Westerman

Mike Enzi

Trey Gowdy

Lamar Smith

Rob Portman

Walter Jones

Richard Hudson

Tom Cole

Patrick Toomey

Rob Wittman

Pete Olson

Bill Cassidy

Doug LaMalfa

Mike Conaway

Marsha Blackburn

Randy Hultgren

Chris Gibson

Todd Young

Keith Rothfus

Sam Johnson

David Joyce

Michael C. Burgess

Leonard Lance

John Carter

Steve Stivers

Kevin McCarthy

Bob Goodlatte

Tim Huelskamp

John Fleming

Cory Gardner

Charles Grassley

John Culberson

Darrell Issa

Erik Paulsen

Marlin Stutzman

Andy Vidak

Mo Brooks

Bob Gibbs

Pat Roberts

Jeff Denham

Lisa Murkowski

Steve Daines

Kelly Ayotte

Adam Kinzinger

Blaine Luetkemeyer

Steven Brett Guthrie

Shelley Moore Capito

John Kline

Matt Salmon

Steve Pearce

Paul Ryan

Andy Harris

David Vitter

Jason Chaffetz

Steve Womack

Gregory Paul Walden

Mac Thornberry

Charles J. Fleischmann

Mike Coffman

Frank LoBiondo

Susan Collins

Thomas Anthony Marino

Chris Collins

Tim Scott

Raul Labrador

Mark Meadows

David Trott

Dan Benishek

Fred Upton

Paul Gosar

Patrick Tiberi

Dave Reichert

Richard Burr

Joe Barton

Vern Buchanan

Aaron Schock

Ken Calvert

Michael K. Simpson

Phil Roe

Bill Johnson

Richard Nugent

Rodney Frelinghuysen

Reid Ribble

Michael Crapo

Mark Walker

Dennis Ross

Diane Black

Cresent Hardy

David McKinley

Kevin Brady

Rob Woodall

Rob Bishop

Edward Whitfield

Ron Johnson

Tom Reed

Joe Heck

Jaime Herrera Beutler

Duncan Hunter

Mick Mulvaney

Michael G. Fitzpatrick

Jeff Flake

Mike Turner

Charles Boustany Jr.

Bob Latta

Charles W. Dent

James Lankford

Sean Duffy

Bill Huizenga

Bill Posey

Tom Emmer

Dean Heller

Tom Rooney

Randy Neugebauer

Tim Murphy

Cynthia Lummis

Paul Cook

Gregg Harper

Justin Amash

Cathy McMorris Rodgers

Devin Nunes

Mark Amodei

Don Young

David Jolly

[crowdpac-blog]

[crowdpac-blog]

The Million Dollar Donor Counties in America

See which counties give the most to political campaigns over three decades. Watch the evolution of political donations by county going back to 1980, just press "play". 

See original post Jon Ward on Yahoo News here. 

The rise of Silicon Valley as a financial political force, in charts and graphics.

Silicon Valley has become a major source of political donations in recent years, as tech companies and the men and women made rich by them have grown more interested in politics.

But when exactly did political giving from the Valley really start to take off? Yahoo News reached out to Crowdpac to try to help us answer that question. And we came back with a map — not just of the Bay Area, but of the entire United States — that tracks giving by presidential year from every county in the country going back to 1980.

Crowdpac's co-founder Adam Bonica database is a collection of over 100 million political contributions made between 1979 and 2012 in local, state and federal elections.

You can zoom in on the map with your mouse. When you do that in the Bay Area, you can see that there were two big jumps in the three counties that are home to much of the Silicon Valley elite: Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco. The first jump came during the 2000 election cycle, on the heels of the first tech bubble, and was most noticeable in San Mateo County, where political giving went from $2.4 million in 1996 to $33.8 million four years later. That made it the third most donation-heavy of all the counties in the country.

San Mateo has stayed pretty flat since then, sending $36.7 million toward political causes in 2012.

In San Francisco and Santa Clara, it's a different story. Those two counties saw big jumps in giving in 2000, 2004 and 2008. Then in 2012 they made a quantum leap. Giving from San Francisco County residents nearly tripled, from $56.1 million to $142.2 million. And giving from Santa Clara, the center of Silicon Valley, more than quintupled, increasing from $36.8 million in 2008 to $155.9 million in 2012. That's a massive leap, and puts the county in fourth place nationwide among top-giving counties.

Indeed, both Santa Clara and San Francisco counties are now among the top five counties for political giving across the country. They still trail Los Angeles County, New York County and Harris County, Texas. New York and Los Angeles have been No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, during every presidential election going back to 1980 — with the exceptions of 2004 and 2012, when they reversed places and Los Angeles was No. 1 and New York was No. 2. Harris County, which includes oil-rich Houston, has been in the top five going back to 1980 as well.

If you count Santa Clara and San Francisco together as homes to Silicon Valley money, the valley was a bigger factor financially in 2012 than anywhere else in America except for Los Angeles. Factor in nearby San Mateo — and perhaps Alameda, Marin and even Contra Costa counties — and the number grows larger still. (Of course, Los Angeles also has contiguous high-giving neighbors in Orange and San Diego counties, complicating the comparison.)

Regardless of how you slice it, it's clear that Silicon Valley in 2012 exploded as one of the top centers of the political donor universe.

One important note: The "All Parties" category is more than a simple breakdown of Republican and Democratic Party giving. It also includes giving to causes and groups that are not necessarily affiliated with a political party. Take the case of San Francisco County residents, who gave $142 million total in 2012, but only $40 million of that to Democrats. Did San Francisco County residents give the other $102 million to Republicans? No, of course not. The most likely explanation, Crowdpac said, is California’s public referendum system, which draws large amounts of political giving each election. For example, in 2012, Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist, donated around $30 million to a group called Californians to Close the Out-of-State Corporate Tax Loophole, according to Crowdpac's data.

Have fun digging into the data in the map yourself to see other trends, and check out the slideshow, which lists the 10 highest-giving counties from every election since 1980.

[crowdpac-blog]

Who are the least effective political donors in America?

Tuesday’s elections were accompanied by much agonizing (again) over the amount of money in politics. This was the most expensive mid-term election ever. But did donors get value for the money they spent? Or more precisely, which donors got what they paid for - candidates that won - and which donors ended up backing losers?

We looked at the data - and compiled a list of 100 most effective and least effective donors in America. To make sure we were able to discern meaningful trends, we only looked at donors who gave to more than 10 candidates, and $10,000 in total, this cycle. With a small number of exceptions (more on that later) the donors in the top 100 and bottom 100 of effectiveness are not household names or public figures. So we grouped them into categories. Here's what we found:

The most effective political donors in America are:

Centrist donors, rather than strongly liberal or conservative donors; 

C-suite executives and other corporate executives, and 

Include Steve Ballmer and Paul Allen, both formerly senior executives at Microsoft.

The least effective political donors in America are:

Overwhelmingly conservative: conservative donors are much less effective at picking winners than liberal donors;

Retired people, and 

Include former TV host Jerry Springer and Linda McMahon, the wrestling magnate and former Republican candidate.

Some notes on the data

The rankings are based on the top 100 and bottom 100 of all donors to federal candidates, calculated by the ratio of money donated to candidates who won or lost.

The visualizations use the Crowdpac scoring system and liberal/conservative scale, where 0 is in the middle; 10L is the most liberal and 10C the most conservative.

The size of the circles shows how large a percentage of the top 100 most effective or least effective donors fall into each category.

We applied some cut-offs to exclude random one-off contributions and so we could see some meaningful patterns. We only included:

1.  Donors who made at least 10 donations this cycle

2.  Donors who gave at least $10k this cycle

3.  Donors who gave to at least 25 candidates since 2004

4.  Donors who have given over $50k since 2004

[crowdpac-blog]

The political bias of each profession

Created by Alice Tsing, Data Scientist and Software Developer at Crowdpac.

Below are all the charts of political leaning for each profession, originally posted here on Business Insider by Andy Kiersz and Hunter Walker.

The basic summary chart below shows the average ideology scores for each profession. However, the "purple" professions that appear in the middle of the spectrum aren't really bipartisan. They're actually polarized: Rather than having a large number of donors with middle of the road politics, they're largely split, with a big liberal group on one side and a similarly sized large conservative group on the other.

Below are all the charts by profession. These graphs show the contributions by individual donors in each industry to political candidates. 10L being the most liberal and 10C being the most conservative. 

[crowdpac-blog]

How conservative is Joni Ernst? Data-checking msnbc's Chris Matthews

On his Friday 24th October msnbc show, host Chris Matthews strongly criticized Republican Senate candidate for Iowa, Joni Ernst, for "masquerading as a mainstream Republican."  How accurate is that claim? We checked the data:

Crowdpac's research shows that political donations are the best predictor of how a candidate will behave in office. So our data model calculates objective scores for candidates by analyzing their donors. We then show how liberal or conservative a candidate is on a scale of 0-10 in either direction, where 10L is the most liberal, and 10C the most conservative.

Overall, Joni Ernst is a 7.1C - no moderate by any means, but when you look at the average score for Republicans in Congress (5.9C) she could certainly not be described as extreme - not according to the data, anyway. There are plenty of Republican candidates who are more conservative: in fact there are 21 Senate candidates more conservative than Ernst, and 166 House candidates who are more conservative. 

What about her positions on the issues? 

Again, according to the data, she is certainly no moderate. She is to the right of the Republican average on 14 out of 15 issues. But she is not dramatically to the right. The biggest gap between her and the Republican average is on the issue of Abortion. But the gap is under 2 points - and there are many Republican candidates who have scores much further to the right of the average. On Fair Elections, Ernst scores the same as the average Republican at 5.6C.

Ernst's most conservative score, 7.3C, is on Unions and Labor. That is not exceptionally conservative when you look at the other candidates running for office, or sitting members of Congress. For example, nearly half of Ted Cruz's scores on the issues are 8, 9 or 10C, whilst none of Joni Ernst's are that conservative. Ernst is not even the most conservative Republican Senate candidate in a battleground state: that honor goes to Tom Cotton in Arkansas, who has an overall score of 7.4C.

So it seems that according to the data, at least, Chris Matthews' claim that Joni Ernst is "masquerading as a mainstream Republican" is hard to justify. For more data on all 2014 Congressional candidates, go to crowdpac.com.

[crowdpac-blog]

Who is Greg Orman?

Data-Checking the Kansas Senate Race

Greg Orman is an Independent who is running for the US Senate in Kansas against incumbent Pat Roberts. The race is now rated as a toss-up by The Rothenberg Political Report/Roll Call. In order to appeal to voters from both parties, Orman has not explicitly said which party he will caucus with. He has said that he will join the party that has the majority.  But if Greg Orman is elected and neither party has the majority, the party he decides to caucus with will determine which party controls the Senate. In this scenario, who would Orman caucus with? Is he actually undecided? What perspectives does the data offer?

The objective data on Greg Orman clearly indicates that he is far more likely to be, effectively, a Democratic member of Congress than his campaign claims.

Crowdpac’s research shows that campaign contributions are the best predictor of how a candidate would behave in office. Crowdpac’s data model calculates objective scores for candidates based on campaign contributions - donations to candidates, and those made by candidates. The scores use a liberal/conservative scale, where 10L is the most liberal and 10C is the most conservative.

Overall, the data shows that Greg Orman is much more liberal than the Democratic nominee for the Kansas seat Chad Taylor (who dropped out of the race in August). Based on Taylor’s donors and who he himself donated to, Crowdpac scored him as a 0.7C - slightly on the conservative side of center. Orman, on the other hand, is much more liberal with a score of 4.6L. Orman is in fact more liberal than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (4.4L). His score is also extremely liberal in the context of Kansas, which has not elected a Democratic Senator since 1932.  

Another perspective is offered by looking at the Independent Senator for Maine, Angus King. When King was running for the Senate in 2013, like Orman he did not say whether he would caucus with the Democrats or Republicans. Angus King in fact went on to caucus with the Democratic Party, and as his Crowdpac profile page shows, his voting record in the Senate has been liberal nearly 97% of the time. Crowdpac scores King as a 4.3L, which makes Greg Orman more liberal than Angus King - perhaps another clue as to how he might behave if elected.

Greg Orman’s score is based on who has donated to his campaign, as well as who Orman himself has donated to in the past. Crowdpac found records of Greg Orman donating over $500,000 to various candidates. Of the candidates he supported, 90% of his money has gone to candidates who have liberal Crowdpac scores. The graph below shows how much money he donated, arranged by the recipients’ Crowdpac score. Orman donated around $180,000 to candidates who are rated as 6L; Nancy Pelosi is an example of a candidate in the 6L category. Orman donated around $160,000 to candidates who are rated as 7L;   Senator Al Franken is an example of a politician who falls into the 7L category. Orman also donated to candidates as liberal as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Above graph shows Greg Orman’s donations to other candidates

If elected, Greg Orman may caucus with whichever party is in the majority in order to have a greater influence on legislation and the committees on which he will serve. However, if Orman is the deciding seat in determining which party will hold a majority, it appears extremely likely that he will caucus with the Democratic Party. Based on his overall score and the scores of candidates Orman has supported in the past, he clearly leans to the left. A Senator Orman would be a much more liberal representative than Kansas has seen in decades.

[crowdpac-blog]

New data shows just how liberal Silicon Valley is

With our database of all political donors and candidates stretching back to 1980 - and all associated publicly available information, such as the location and employment details of donors - we are able to spot interesting trends and patterns in political giving. Here's some data we recently put together on the politics of Silicon Valley, some of which was featured in a piece earlier this week by our friends at Yahoo.

Below is the full set of political donor graphs originally posted by Jon Ward on Yahoo! News here.

The graphs represent of all the donations from employees of major Silicon Valley tech companies, venture capital firms and the two major research universities in the area, Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley.

Of the tech firms, Twitter has the most liberal employee universe, with 100 percent of its employees’ 23 political donations going to liberal candidates.

Apple Inc. and Google are tied, with 90 percent of their employees' giving going to liberal politicians. Yahoo, LinkedIn, Amazon.com and Facebook all had employees who gave more than 85 percent of their donations to liberals.

Salesforce.com, eBay and PayPal had giving to liberals in the low 80s, while a group of older tech companies — Microsoft, Oracle, HP, Cisco and Intel — showed a slightly more conservative bent in employees’ giving. But at these companies, more than 70 percent of giving still went to liberal candidates.

Of the two universities, Stanford had a higher absolute number of donors to liberal candidates, but Berkeley had a far higher percentage giving to liberals, with 97 percent of its employees who made donations giving to left-of-center candidates. About 91 percent of Stanford's employees whose donations met the reporting threshold gave to left-leaning politicians.

Crowdpac also measured giving from Silicon Valley venture capital firms, where the giving turned out to be more politically balanced. About 57 percent of the giving from these companies was to liberal candidates.

Crowdpac based its ratings of donors on the political ideology of their total giving history, ranking donors on a scale of 1 to 10 for least liberal or conservative to most liberal or conservative. A donor had to have donated money at least twice in order to be given a ranking.

[crowdpac-blog]

All the political donors in your city, mapped

Posted by Gisel Kordestani, COO of Crowdpac

Here are the full set of political donor maps that Vox used for their feature today by Andrew Prokop. See the Vox story here.

The maps show major US cities and metro areas, highlighting where political donors live, using publicly available data from campaign finance reports. They include all itemized donations — from both small donors and large ones — for all state and federal races since 2004. Blue dots represent Democratic donors and red dots for conservative ones. 

[crowdpac-blog]

Data-Checking the Colorado Senate Race: Spotlight on Women's Rights

One of the hottest issues in the crucial Colorado Senate race is gender equality and abortion access.  Republican challenger Cory Gardner has had his own problems to deal with on the issue - for example being accused of flip-flopping over his support for a Colorado personhood initiative on the state level. (The campaign back-and-forth has focused on whether a federal bill on personhood that he co-sponsored is or is not the same, or in fact exists at all.)

Meanwhile, incumbent Democrat Mark Udall has proudly promoted his pro-women’s rights record in the race. But what does the data show? We checked - and Udall’s record does not quite match his claim.  Based on an analysis of legislative text and floor records by Crowdpac, abortion and women’s issues are the two issues that Mark Udall focuses on the least.  It’s interesting to see him prioritize these issues in his campaign when, according to the data, he has not done so in Congress.

Below is a table showing the issues that Mark Udall focuses on - and you can see his full Crowdpac profile here.  Cory Gardner’s profile is here. Remember, you can donate to their campaigns directly from their Crowdpac profile page.

Mark Udall’s Top Issues: 

Based on analysis of legislative text and floor records of Mark Udall’s time in the US Senate

[crowdpac-blog]

To address women's issues, elect more women

By Gisel Kordestani, COO and Co-Founder of Crowdpac. Originally posted on The Hill.

If there’s one positive thing to have come out of the horrific examples of violence against women that we’ve been witness to these past weeks, it’s the unprecedented attention paid to the issue. And about time too. This is a plague that afflicts millions of American women every day - and it’s a plague we can and must eradicate.

So much for the grand declarations: we’ve seen many of those recently. What, in a practical sense, can we do about it?

Here’s an unfashionable idea: let’s use the political system. Domestic violence might mostly happen at home, but in the end the battle for meaningful action to fight it takes place in our political chambers. By all means let’s debate whether the head of the NFL should lose his job. But it’s also vital for us to debate the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

Up till now, our representatives in Washington could get away with ignoring domestic violence. Who ever knew which members of Congress cared about it, worked on it, made a difference on it? It was impossible to find out unless you were a Capitol Hill insider.

Well, my company, Crowdpac, has changed all that. One of my co-founders wrote recently about our aim to put political power in everyone’s hands. Better information - information that is objective, non-partisan and above all that you can use to take effective action - is at the heart of it.

So when it comes to domestic violence, our data can tell you, at a glance, which members of Congress are most vocal and which are most silent. Better than that, you can take action: depending on your point of view, you can use Crowdpac to donate to the campaigns of the candidates on these lists - or their opponents.

At Crowdpac, we don’t take sides. We present you with objective data and leave the rest to you. But there is one issue where we do express a point of view: the state of our democracy. We all know the arguments about big donors and special interests controlling the political system. We started Crowdpac to fight that, and with your help we’ll win.

But there’s another aspect of under-representation I want to highlight, and it relates directly to the issue of the moment - domestic violence. Look at our objective data on the members of Congress most vocal on this issue: all women. Look at those who are most silent: all men. Look at our new Power Rankings, in association with CQ Roll Call, showing the top five most influential members of Congress on any given issue. On Gender Equality: surprise surprise, all five are women.

The truth is, we will never get the action we need on domestic violence and gender equality unless we elect more women to Congress.

Superficially, women are moving up in national politics. Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House and is today the House Minority Leader. Sarah Palin was on the GOP ticket in 2008. Hillary Clinton is front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2016. But beneath these famous standard-bearers, the situation is dire: only 20 women Senators out of 100, and 71 Representatives in the House, out of 435.

Crowdpac's data shows us the dynamics in more detail - both in terms of the current position and the potential for change. In the mid-term elections for Congress in a few weeks, just 18% of all candidates are women. OK - what if you exclude Independents, minority candidates - those who are less likely to win? Any better? Oh yes. If you consider only Democrats and Republicans, the proportion of women candidates is - wait for it - 20%.

But that overall figure masks a significant disparity between the parties. Overall, there are 128 women Democratic candidates out of 452 - 28% - as opposed to 59 out of 474 women GOP candidates - 12.5%.

By any measure this is pathetic. The US is actually behind Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, China, Sudan, Iraq, Belarus, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, and Rwanda when it comes to female political representation - although, to be fair, I should point out that we are ahead of South Korea and Japan.

Jeannette Rankin, America’s first woman in Congress, was elected in 1917. The first woman to serve in the Senate, Rebecca Latimer Felton, was elected in 1922. In a hundred years, we’ve gone from zero to around one in five. How long before we reach what any reasonable person would surely agree is the right target: parity?

Well, I’ve had a look at our data. At the current rate of increase, we would reach 50% female representation in the Senate and House in 2047. When I will be in my seventies! Why should I wait that long? Why should you wait that long? Why should any of us tolerate the voice of women being relegated for a single second longer - never mind over thirty years!

As with our data on domestic violence, Crowdpac gives you a practical way to do something about it.  We’ve created a list of the female candidates with a chance to win. If they all get elected, and if we continue that trend, then we can bring forward the date of gender parity in Congress to 2024.

If everyone on this list is elected in November, we would add 21 women to the Senate and House in this cycle. That’s not just a good thing in itself. It would mean more practical action on the issues that matter to women - especially, violence against us.

Gisel Kordestani is co-founder and COO of Crowdpac. She is a former director at Google and has an MBA from Harvard University and an BA in international Affairs from the American University of Paris.

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Why We Launched Crowdpac

By Steve Hilton, CEO and Co-Founder of Crowdpac. Originally posted on Huffington Post.

It was such a thrill to see someone tweeting this week that they were "going gaga" over my new website, Crowdpac.com, while someone else described it as "an INCREDIBLE resource" for the upcoming elections. That means a lot to our small start-up team, because we have a big aim: to level the playing field in American politics and put power back where it belongs -- in the hands of the people.

Of course, in theory, that's what elections are for. But in reality? The rich, the powerful, the special interests -- they don't just vote. They're intimately involved in the whole political process. They pay advisors to identify, fund, and train the candidates that most agree with them. They influence elections all over the country. They hire hefty teams in Washington to sway legislation and votes in Congress. They conspire to gerrymander districts so that favored incumbents stay in office. And recent Supreme Court decisions have given the big donors another leg up.

All this means that more and more politicians are beholden to a tiny number of rich donors, instead of being accountable to their constituents. I was shocked to discover, for example, that Ro Khanna, running for Congress in California's 17th District and who presents himself as a modern, tech-savvy, new kind of candidate, is actually No.2 on Crowdpac's 'Fat Cats' list. Of the 1200 or so candidates running for Congress, Khanna raises more of his money from big donors than nearly every other candidate.

Crowdpac is designed to fix this. What if every American could determine within seconds which candidates most agree with them and will pursue an agenda they care about? What if every American could see which of their favored candidates were most at risk of losing their races? What if every American could find campaigns around the country where their donation would have a real effect? In other words, what if you could engage in politics the way the big players do? Imagine if the best candidate -- the one that stands for what the people want -- could actually win. Don't you want that power back?

That's what I mean by a level playing field: giving every American access to the same political tools that the insiders have monopolized. Learning about the candidates on your local ballot and supporting those across the country that match your priorities. This knowledge is real power once you realize that your dollars could make a difference. A whole industry has been built in Washington, hoarding information to keep politics in the hands of the professionals. Now we're opening it up to the rest of us. As someone tweeted about our site: "Data visuals are gorgeous. Idea is so smart. Now middle-class can play the 'influence elections' game too."

So: we can wallow in our distaste for the role of money in politics, and leave it all to the big donors and special interests who have co-opted the system. Or we can co-opt the system ourselves -- by organizing, mobilizing, getting together. Please join me: let's beat the big donors at their own game.

Steve Hilton is co-founder and CEO of Crowdpac and a visiting professor at Stanford University. He was previously Senior Advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron

Follow Steve Hilton on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SteveHiltonx