Feeling inspired by Bobby Constantino's 2018 analysis of donations to candidates running for Suffolk County District Attorney, I've been feeling compelled for some time to similarly analyze the contributions made by individuals to the candidates running for Mayor of Boston in 2021.

For the 2021 Boston Mayoral race, there were 39,970 donations in total that I was able to pull from the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF), which helpfully maintains the Commonwealth's public election campaign contribution ledger in tab-delimited text files. Each record contains information about the contributor, such as an address, occupation, the candidate they donated to and the amount they gave them. The data provided by OCPF also contains campaign expenditure information, but for the purposes of this work I excluded that information.

The nearly 40,000 donations span 2019 through September 4th, 2021 – which explains why former Mayor Marty Walsh might be included in the below table. About half of all donations are in Suffolk County, MA. They're listed below in parenthesis.

Note: The above numbers may not be all contributions made to any particular candidate – instead, take the above to represent the data sample by which I created the maps you're about to see.

Boston Contributors

We'll stay small. There are folks from around the state, and indeed the country, who have contributed to candidates running for Mayor of Boston. Looking just at Boston however, here's what folks who are donating to the following candidates list as their address:

Andrea Campbell

Councilor Campbell seems to have a modest and diverse backing. JP and Roslindale have been healthy supports for her. But also Dorchester, the Back Bay and parts of Charlestown. She leaves much to be desired in West Roxbury, Southie and Neoponset/East Fields/Adams Village.

Annissa Essaibi George

If you compare Councilor Essaibi George to Former Mayor Walsh, you'll see that there's quite a lot of similarities: she's picking up the white working class vote. Where she differs, however, is that folks Downtown and in the Back Bay are not behind her – instead choosing to cast their support overwhelmingly for other candidates.

John Barros

The City's former chief of economic development is doing strong in the Newmarket area, with a scattershot of support around Dorchester, the West and East ends.

Jon Santiago

Rep. Santiago has dropped out of the Mayoral race, but I still felt it important to examine the kind of support he's been getting. Donors to his campaign are strong in and around the South End, particularly near the Boston Medical Center campus. The North End also had strong support for him.

Kim Janey

The interim Mayor is doing strong among communities of color in Boston. She also has a healthy support from the Back Bay, Downtown and North End. Outside that however, she doesn't seem to have much fiscal support – with only a handful of folks donating from West Roxbury.

Marty Walsh

Our control group, you could say, to understand where donors for Mayor Walsh list as their address at the time of donation. Mostly white, mostly affluent and residential neighborhoods – along with strong business community support.

Michelle Wu

Councilor Wu has been receiving, without question, the strongest grassroots support. The median donation for her campaign has been $25, orders of magnitudes lower than the other candidates. This suggests that her political momentum has spurred even the unlikeliest of donors to contribute small amounts to her campaign. She has strong support in the West End and North End in Downtown Boston, as well as the Back Bay, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, Charlestown and East Boston. She's not performing poorly in the other neighborhoods, either. Even her modest numbers from Allston/Brighton, Southie, Dorchester and West Roxbury are more than some of the other candidates have raised.

I'll let you draw any further conclusions from the above.