Topic: Newsmax
An April 12 Newsmax "Insider Report" item touts a study claiming that "congressional districts represented by a Democrat have received significantly more money from the $787 billion stimulus bill than those with a Republican representative":
The study by Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, found that on average Democratic districts got 1 1/2 times as many awards as Republican districts in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Those Democratic districts received about 2 1/2 times more stimulus dollars than Republican districts, $122 billion to $46 billion.
And Democratic districts also received larger awards on average than did Republican districts — $471 million for a Democratic district and $260 million for one represented by a Republican, de Rugy points out in an article for National Review.
But Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com points out that de Rugy's study is flawed because it ignores that many of the districts receiving the most funding contain state capitals, which tend to lean Democratic: "A lot of stimulus funds are distributed to state agencies, which are then responsible for allocating and administering the funds to the presumed benefit of citizens throughout the state. These state agencies, of course, are usually located in or near the state capital."
In a later post as part of an exchange with de Rugy, Silver also points out that de Rugy baselessly suggests the stimulus was deliberately designed to disproportionally benefit Democratic districts.
