On Data and Democracy 2025 Year-in-Review Visualized

Tracing the money, the ideological purges, the strategic debates, and the court battles: A visual deep-dive into the data of 2025 and charting an empirical roadmap for a more resilient democracy.

As 2025 comes to a close, I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read and share this work. Writing these pieces has been a highlight of my year—a chance to put the data pipeline I’ve built over the past fifteen years to work for a wider audience.

Despite everything going on around us, I remain fundamentally optimistic about American democracy and the prospects for meaningful reform. In the first half of 2025, I focused on using data to document the rise of authoritarianism and its parallels to what we’ve seen in other countries. In the second half, I turned toward opportunities for reform. This little Substack has had real impact this year—shaping narratives and providing empirical support for reform-minded people and groups.

I am grateful to be part of a growing community committed to building a better democracy. Your engagement—reading, sharing, pushing back, offering tips—has made this work sharper and more useful. I don’t take that for granted.

This year-end roundup covers the systematic targeting of institutions, the parasitic mechanics of political money, and the data-driven case for long-term hope.

1. Spam PACs and The Fundraising-Industrial Complex

This year, I traced the money flowing through the Democratic fundraising apparatus and found a system consuming itself. My investigation focused on the “fundraising-industrial complex”—a parasitic ecosystem where raising money has become the primary activity of politics, rather than a means to an end.

In August, I traced the money flowing through Mothership Strategies, a firm founded by former DCCC digital directors who privatized the party’s aggressive fundraising playbook. Since 2020, their network of PACs—Progressive Turnout Project, Stop Republicans, End Citizens United—has raised $678 million from individual donors. Only a small fraction has reached campaigns, as most was consumed by the extremely inefficient fundraising model.

The donor records revealed something darker: Systematic targeting of elderly Americans. One 89-year-old Indianapolis woman made 7,532 separate donations totaling $68,666. The tactics—manufactured urgency, fake “matches,” emotional manipulation—mirror elder financial fraud.

The problem extends far beyond rogue consultants. My analysis of FEC disbursement records showed campaigns now spend 38 cents of every dollar raised just to raise more money—a fourfold increase since 2004. In 2024, campaigns burned through $3 billion on fundraising operations alone. If current trends hold, fundraising will soon overtake advertising as the largest spending category.

The party’s own committees remain complicit. The DCCC and DSCC still send texts promising nonexistent “400% matches” and fake deadlines, legitimizing the predatory ecosystem. The situation has not improved this election cycle.

Shortly after my investigation was published, ActBlue contacted me. Within weeks ActBlue announced new policies prohibiting “aggressive, unethical, or deceptive fundraising behavior.” A good first step. But party leadership has remained silent, and the tactics continue. In the coming year, I’ll release a plan on how Democrats can reform their fundraising practices and return to a more efficient, respectful, and sustainable fundraising model.

Takeaway: The fundraising industrial complex has metastasized into the party’s largest expenditure—and its greatest credibility liability.

2. The Moderation Debate

The supposed electoral bonus for centrist candidates is a statistical illusion. After accounting for fundraising and incumbency, the advantage vanishes entirely.

The New York Times Editorial Board’s fall editorial arguing that moderation wins prompted two detailed responses. Their case rested on PAC endorsements—but their “moderate” candidates were disproportionately well-funded incumbents. In The New York Times Argues Moving to the Center Is the Way to Win. Here’s What Their Data Actually Shows, I showed that comparing like with like eliminated the effect. In The New York Times’ Moderation Advantage is a Statistical Mirage, I demonstrated that using voter perception data from the Cooperative Election Study—how voters actually see candidates—moderation shows no significant benefit.

The raw numbers reinforce this finding. Progressive incumbents in competitive districts since 2016 won 93.3% of their races. Moderate incumbents: 83.6%. Of 22 Democratic incumbents who lost between 2016 and 2024, 21 were moderates.

What does drive election outcomes? Turnout. In 2024, registered Republicans voted at higher rates than registered Democrats in every state with available data. The pattern across election cycles is clear: Democratic vote share rises in lockstep with the partisan turnout ratio.

Takeaway: Democrats already run moderates in nearly every competitive seat—and still lose. What drives outcomes in recent elections is partisan turnout, not centrist positioning.

3. Authoritarian Tactics: The Ideological Purge

I began the year by bringing data to help document and contextualize the attacks by DOGE on federal agencies. This provided empirical confirmation that DOGE was never about efficiency but rather a vehicle for an ideological purge. This paralleled what we have seen in Hungary, Turkey, and elsewhere as authoritarians attempt to consolidate control.

Using measures of agency ideology based on federal executives’ perceptions, I analyzed which agencies faced layoffs. The result was unambiguous: agencies perceived as liberal were overwhelmingly more likely to face staffing cuts. Ideology was the single strongest predictor—far outweighing agency size or budget. Nine out of ten federal employees laid off by DOGE worked in liberal-leaning agencies.

The GOP budget proposal completed the picture. Every single proposed budget increase went to conservative-leaning agencies. The Department of Defense—which DOGE initially promised to cut—received significant increases. Meanwhile, USAID and CFPB, the two most liberal-leaning agencies, faced the deepest cuts.

The targeting extended beyond agencies. Executive orders disproportionately hit law firms whose attorneys donate to Democratic candidates. OPM’s new “Merit Hiring Plan” now requires loyalty essays from federal job applicants—a return to the pre-1883 spoils system, implemented through HR paperwork.

Takeaway: DOGE systematically targeted liberal-leaning agencies for cuts while directing every budget increase to conservative-leaning agencies. The efficiency rationale was a cover for ideological restructuring.

4. Autocratic Legalism and The Assault on The Courts

The judiciary became a primary battleground this year, revealing a profound fracture in the constitutional order. I documented with data how different court levels treated administration policies. Federal district courts ruled against Trump administration actions most of the time—with resistance spanning the ideological spectrum. Even conservative judges pushed back. But the Supreme Court ruled in the administration’s favor with few exceptions during the same period.

The Supreme Court’s emergency docket made the disparity concrete. Then came the ruling curtailing nationwide injunctions—effectively neutralizing dozens of lower court decisions in a single stroke. This pattern exemplifies what scholars call "autocratic legalism"—the systematic weaponization of legal institutions to consolidate power while maintaining the appearance of legal process.

The assault extended to judges themselves. The federal arrest of sitting Judge Hannah Dugan marked an unprecedented escalation. The DOJ sued the entire 15-judge bench of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. In Federal Judges Are Begging Us to Pay Attention, I used computational text analysis to systematically document these assaults—and pointed to parallel tactics used by authoritarian regimes elsewhere, along with the resistance strategies that proved effective.

Takeaway: Lower courts applied the law and overwhelmingly ruled against the administration. The Supreme Court intervened to reverse them. The judiciary is now in open conflict with itself.

5. Oligarchy and The Unbelievable Cost of Billionaires

The political system is becoming increasingly detached from the majority and tethered to a tiny, wealthy elite.

The top 0.01% of donors—roughly 26,000 people—now provide over 50% of all federal campaign funds, up from under 10% in the 1980s.

The partisan disparity is stark. In 2024, Republicans received 56% of their funding from donors giving over $1 million. Democrats: 18%.

Meanwhile, the top 100 billionaires gained $1.094 trillion in 2024. 2025 marked the second year in a row where the wealth accumulated by the top 100 richest Americans would have easily covered the nation’s entire spending on groceries.

Takeaway: A small donor class now funds the majority of federal campaigns and holds wealth that dwarfs public budgets. This concentration is incompatible with representative democracy.

6. The Biased Politics of Government Shutdowns and How to End Them

Government shutdowns are not an unavoidable feature of our system. They arose from a single 1980 Justice Department memo that transformed federal employees’ livelihoods into bargaining chips.

The data shows shutdown rules are systematically biased. Agencies perceived to be aligned with Democratic priorities—like the EPA or Department of Education—face devastating furlough rates, while agencies like ICE and CBP remain largely operational.

This asymmetry explains why Republicans consistently trigger these crises while Democrats scramble to end them. The party comfortable with watching the government shutter holds all the cards.

In Why America’s Government Shutdowns Are a Self-Inflicted Crisis—And How to End Them, I traced the origins of this dysfunction and outlined how a single memorandum from a new Attorney General could end it.

Takeaway: Shutdowns are a policy choice, not a constitutional requirement. The rules are biased toward Republicans, and a future administration can fix them without legislation.

7. Who Really Blocks Housing?

I ended the year by putting the narrative that environmentalists are blocking housing in California to the test. In an analysis of over 1,200 CEQA lawsuits, I found that established environmental groups filed only 8% of cases. The real culprits: HOAs, wealthy individuals, and NIMBY groups filed 54%. Businesses filed twice as many lawsuits as environmental organizations—often to stifle competition or block regulations. In How Regulation by Litigation Strangled American Abundance, I traced how environmental law has been weaponized by wealthy gatekeepers to block growth, not protect ecosystems.

Takeaway: The problem isn't environmentalism. It's a legal system that empowers the privileged to manufacture scarcity.

8. Generational Politics and the Age Gap

American politicians are the oldest of any developed democracy, creating a profound disconnect between those who make decisions and those who must live with the consequences.

The mismatch is acute within the Democratic Party. Half of Democratic senators are over 67 years old. Half of registered Democratic voters are under 50—a 17-year gap between representatives and voters.

In research with Jake Grumbach, we found the average political dollar now comes from a 67-year-old donor—up from 61 just eight years ago. The trend was sharper than we expected. Only later did I discover what was driving it: the predatory fundraising tactics targeting seniors documented above.

Meanwhile, older generations project their racial anxieties onto the youth. However, the data tells a different story. Racial resentment is collapsing among Gen Z across every demographic—education, gender, geography, and religion. They are the most racially progressive generation in American history, moving forward even as the political class remains stuck.

Takeaway: The widening age gap between American leadership and the public is an institutional story. It is sustained by a fundraising ecosystem that increasingly relies on the elderly to fund a political class largely divorced from the most racially progressive generation in American history.

9. Anti-Corruption Politics and the Path Forward

Eighty percent of Americans believe major donors have too much influence. Corruption is the Achilles’ heel of authoritarian regimes and frequently their downfall. A party that proves it is not for sale can unite disparate groups around a shared grievance against a rigged system.

Republicans have made this easy. When pollsters ask voters to describe the Republican Party, the most common response is “corrupt.” But Democrats can’t capitalize without credibility. Unlike Republicans, who depend on billionaire backers, Democrats have the structural fundraising advantage to reject mega-donor money and still compete.

Takeaway: Anti-corruption messaging requires no ideological tradeoffs and unites people across demographic and ideological lines. But it only works if Democrats reform themselves first.

Looking Ahead to 2026

In the coming year, I’ll be digging deeper into the fundraising industrial complex. The more I examine the numbers, the worse it looks—and I’ll be releasing a plan for how Democrats can reform their fundraising model and return to a more efficient, respectful, and sustainable approach.

Anti-corruption politics will be a central focus. I’ll be developing concrete proposals for how Democrats can leverage their structural fundraising advantage to reject mega-donor money and gain the credibility to make corruption the defining issue of the 2026 midterms.

I’ll continue tracking the courts, the agencies, and the ongoing assault on democratic institutions—documenting what’s happening and pointing to resistance strategies that have worked elsewhere.

Thank you for reading. The work to build a stronger and more equitable democracy continues.