Aug 03, 2007  LISA KEEN | COMMENTS     

in April to 20 percent in July. Only U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona — whose campaign is floundering — gained. He went from 13 percent in April to 28 percent in July.

Unlike with Democrats, who collected money in every zip code area, there were several areas where the top three polling Republicans were shut out. The Northhampton zip code of 01062 has given zero dollars to Giuliani, Romney or McCain thus far this year. San Diego’s University Heights (92116), San Francisco’s Mission (94131) and Chicago’s Andersonville (60640) have completely snubbed Giuliani and Romney. And Philadelphia’s Southwark (19147) has rebuffed Romney and McCain.

In examining the April and July reports together, 34 zip codes with well-known heavily gay neighborhoods were examined. The zip codes spanned 20 cities in 12 states and were chosen based on three criteria: the number and percentage of same-sex households counted in the 2000 Census; their rankings in a gay market study (by gaymarketexpress.com) of online membership in gay web sites to determine where gay people reside; and a survey of editors in major U.S. cities.

Crunching with caution

For the 2008 presidential campaign, there have not yet been any polls identifying voters by sexual orientation, so data such as these from the FEC reports provide one of the only available gauges of where the gay vote appears to be going. But the data have important limitations: The FEC reports do not specify what contributions came from gay donors, only how many dollars were contributed within a specific zip code. Second, while the zip code areas chosen encompass heavily gay sections of the cities, they also contain areas that are not known to include large numbers of gays. Not all gays have enough money to contribute to political candidates. And there are still more than six months to go before the first voting begins in which people who are likely to contribute to candidates will be under increasing pressure to do so.

As with many number-crunching exercises, the results can also vary depending on how the data are examined. But in this case, several different crunches found only slight variations. For instance, when looking at the top 10 “gayest zip codes” in terms of the largest number of same-sex couples, Obama took the greatest percentage of dollars — 45 percent — compared to Clinton’s 43 percent and Edwards’ 12 percent. The zip codes with the largest number of same-sex couples fell into six large cities — San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Diego, and Washington. But when looking at the top 10 “gayest zip codes” in terms of concentration — that is, the percentage of same-sex couples in relation to the number of all couple households — Clinton was back on top with 47 percent, compared to Obama with 39 percent and Edwards with 14 percent. The zip code areas with more concentrated gay populations added<