How much more stimulus money is spent in swing districts? A lot. Using the data from Recovery.gov and data about swing districts, we see on the chart below that swing districts on average have reported spending $13.5 million more of stimulus funds than non-swing districts. The numbers are the following:

Stimulus funds to the average swing district: $437,371,451.46

Stimulus funds to the average non-swing district: $423,870,363.65

Swing district premium: $13,501,087.81

The list of swing districts comes from the Real Clear Politics  map of congressional districts.  They have a breakdown of  districts using a dark blue to dark red scale and toss-up districts are in gray.  They also do a very credible breakdown based on polling to show which districts belong where.  Check it out here. The Recovery data comes from recovery.gov and is available for download here.

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From ABC News:

Here’s a stimulus success story: In Arizona’s 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have beensaved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

There’s one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.

And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.

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