The Political Leanings of Virginia Zip Codes

• November 5th 2012

by Shilpi Paul

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Believe it or not, the election is tomorrow, and today marks the end of UrbanTurf digging into campaign donation data for the DC area to find out where Barack Obama and Mitt Romney contributors live, how much they are giving and which area’s tend to lean more to the left or more to the right.

Last Thursday, we looked at DC, where Obama contributions outweigh Romney contributions by 4 to 1 on average. On Friday, we analyzed Maryland, where Obama’s margin was a bit smaller.

Today, we’re focusing on Virginia. As opposed to DC and Maryland, Romney received more in contributions than Obama in Virginia, earning $11,689,877 to Obama’s $9,822,630. For our purposes, however, we concentrated on the zip codes that are included in the DC metro area. Using OpenSecrets.org, we unearthed Obama and Romney contributions for the 20 most populated, close-in Virginia zip codes.

Check out a few interesting findings that emerged below.

Five Alexandria Zip Codes Favor Romney

Five zip codes in Alexandria — 22304, 22309, 22310, 22315, 22314 — contributed more to Mitt Romney than to President Obama. However, in 22304, 22314, and 22315, Obama trailed the challenger in donations by a very small margin. For example, in 22315, Obama collected $63,057 to Romney’s $64,894.

McLean Donated the Most to Romney

In 22101, home to the wealthy land of McLean, Romney collected $987,426, the most of any zip code that we looked at in Virginia. This wasn’t too surprising, given that in 2008, the zip code gave the most to Republican candidate John McCain. However, the incumbent is supported in 22101; President Obama collected $554,332 in 2012.

22041 Preferred Obama By the Highest Ratio

Residents of Falls Church’s 22041, which encompasses Bailey’s Crossroads, preferred Obama by the biggest ratio in Virginia, donating $101,101 to Obama and less than half that amount — $43,860 — to Romney.

Note: The contribution data for this article was based on information recorded by OpenSecrets.org as of October 31, 2012. The website is constantly updated with new contribution amounts, so the numbers and rankings in this piece are subject to change.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/the_political_leanings_of_virginia_zip_codes/6250.