South Middlesex Times

Researchers from Rutgers' Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) and the Office of Advanced Research Computing (OARC) have teamed up to analyze patterns in gender and campaign finance across state and congressional elections. This collaboration aims to provide insight into who has a voice in politics.

The "Women, Money, & Politics Watch 2024" report, led by CAWP senior scholar Kira Sanbonmatsu, highlights the under-representation of women as donors to political candidates. The report aligns with CAWP’s mission to study and promote women’s political participation.

“One of the early findings in our research project shows that women are providing less in total contributions to congressional candidates compared to men,” said Sanbonmatsu. “When men out-give women in campaign contributions, this means that women’s voices are less likely to be heard in American politics.”

With the help of OARC’s Amarel supercomputer, the research process has been more efficient and computationally faster than previous efforts. Sanbonmatsu has been working alongside CAWP research associate Shikshya Adhikari and OARC senior scientist Travis Williams on the project.

“We turned to the Amarel supercomputer in order to improve the processing time for our analyses, and Travis Williams from OARC has played an important role in helping us automate our research,” said Sanbonmatsu. “He developed code to accurately match large databases with campaign finance data, something that could not be done on our regular office computers.”

Williams' role involves matching candidate names across various databases, complicated by frequent use of nicknames, maiden names, and middle names. To streamline this process, Williams wrote a script on Amarel using Python that links candidate names and identifies any unmatched entries.

Prior to starting the project, Sanbonmatsu and Adhikari had never used Amarel. However, with assistance from OARC scientists like Williams, they are now regularly utilizing the supercomputer for their ongoing research projects.

“Amarel is an amazing resource available to researchers at Rutgers, and I think more individuals should take advantage of it,” said Adhikari. “OARC also organized trainings and provided presentations that have been a helpful resource for us during this research journey.”

Sanbonmatsu’s research offers a preliminary analysis of donor demographics in political fundraising. It provides an interactive examination of campaign contributions by both men and women across 10 key focus states. Additional factors such as race/ethnicity, party affiliation, and level of office are also being examined as election data continues to roll in.

This summer's goal includes expanding congressional election research to all states. Researchers will update their website periodically as new campaign finance data becomes available.

Individuals can view the research interactively through “The State View” and “Donor Gaps” pages which highlight specific analyses of the report. “The National View,” expected to be released in August, will cover congressional elections across all 50 states.

For additional information on CAWP or the "Women, Money, & Politics Watch 2024" report, please visit the CAWP website.