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If Presidential Candidates Were Like NASCAR Drivers…

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One appreciation I have for several North American sports is amount of reverence given to the team uniform.

Whether we are talking about the Boston Red Sox, the Montreal Canadiens, or the Dallas Cowboys, all aspects of team apparel are designed to represent the essence and history of the team. Jerseys are for the team and fans, and not for the advertisers that want to cover every square inch of material with sponsors.

However, not all North American sports can make this claim.

In fact, some sports like NASCAR take the exact opposite approach: they let each racing team cover their car and apparel with as many ads as possible, and allow this to be part of their income. While it is horrendous from a visual perspective, at least there is a sort of brutal honesty with it all.

It’s obvious that each racer is bought and sold by sponsors, and it’s clear exactly who those advertisers are.

Racing for Presidency

Dan Carlin from the Common Sense podcast frequently mentions that it would be great to live in a world where all politicians had to wear NASCAR-like uniforms displaying the logos of their financial supporters.

Can you imagine if each time Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio gave a speech, a Goldman Sachs crest was embedded on the shoulder of each outfit?

NASCAR Candidates

Today’s infographic comes to us from Represent.us, and it shows the top donor industries for the major presidential candidates still in the race. In the graphic, the top five industry fundraising sources are indicated for each candidate. They are ranked from #1 to #5 based on the amount of money raised, and the width of each connection is based on this information.

If Presidential Candidates Were Like NASCAR Drivers...

Note: in this case, we are looking at the industries of individual campaign donors, and corporate or individual donations to Political Action Committees or the parties themselves are not included in this summary.

So, who were the biggest campaign contributors?

It’s no surprise to see that Wall Street has been extremely influential in donations. More specifically, Wall Street donated most to those representing the establishment, such as Clinton, Bush, and Rubio.

The other major donors came from industries such as law and real estate. Lawyers gave heavily to Clinton, Rubio, Sanders, Cruz, and Bush, and the real estate industry gave mainly to Rubio and Bush.

Campaign Funding to Date

How much have candidates raised to date? Here’s a recent roundup of that data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The darker bar coincides with “outside money” including conventional party committees as well as the more controversial super PACs and 501(c) “dark money” organizations. The lighter bar represents money that has gone directly to campaigns.

2016 Funding so far

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War

Visualized: Top 15 Global Tank Fleets

Heavily armed and armored, the modern tank is a versatile and mobile weapons platform, and a critical piece of contemporary warfare. 

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Teaser image for an dot matrix chart of the top 15 global tank fleets, broken down by main battle tanks, armored fighting vehicles, and storage, showing that the U.S. is number one, by a wide margin.

The Top 15 Global Tank Fleets

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Heavily armed and armored, the modern tank is a versatile and mobile weapons platform, and a critical piece of contemporary warfare.

This visualization shows the top 15 global tank fleets, using data from the 2024 Military Balance report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Let’s take an in-depth look at the top three fleets:

1. United States

As the world’s pre-eminent military power, it’s perhaps no surprise that the United States also has the largest tank fleet, by a wide margin.

In total, they have just over 45,000 armored fighting vehicles in operation, along with 2,640 main battle tanks (MBTs), and 12,800 vehicles in storage, of which 2,000 are main battle tanks.

CategoryVehiclesGlobal rank
Main battle tanks2,6404
Armored reconnaissance1,7451
Infantry fighting vehicles3,2623
Armored personnel carriers10,6441
Amphibious assault vehicles1,4011
Armored utility vehicles28,4451
Storage12,8001
Total60,9371

The U.S. is internalizing the lessons from the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, where Western-supplied anti-tank weapons and massed Ukrainian artillery have been cutting Russian tanks to pieces. As a result, the U.S. recently canceled an upgrade of the M1 Abrams in favor of a more ambitious upgrade.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is nervously eyeing a more confident China and a potential clash over Taiwan, where air and naval forces will be critical. However, a recent war game showed that Taiwanese mechanized ground forces, kitted out with American-made tanks and armored fighting vehicles, were critical in keeping the island autonomous.

2. Russia

According to Oryx, a Dutch open-source intelligence defense website, at time of writing, Russia has lost almost 2,800 main battle tanks since invading Ukraine. Considering that in the 2022 edition of the Military Balance, Russia was estimated to have 2,927 MBTs in operation, those are some hefty losses.

Russia has been able to maintain about 2,000 MBTs in the field, in part, by increasing domestic production. Many defense plants have been taken over by state-owned Rostec and now operate around the clock. Russia is also now spending a full third of their budget on defense, equivalent to about 7.5% of GDP.

At the same time, they’ve also been drawing down their Soviet-era stockpiles, which are modernized before being sent to the front. Just how long they can keep this up is an open question; their stockpiles are large, but not limitless. Here is what their storage levels look like:

Category20232024YOY change
Main battle tanks5,0004,000-20.0%
Armored reconnaissance1,000100-90.0%
Infantry fighting vehicles4,0002,800-30.0%
Armored personnel carriers6,0002,300-61.7%
Total16,0009,200-42.5%

3. China

China holds the third overall spot and top place globally for the number of main battle tanks in operation. Untypically, the People’s Liberation Army has no armored vehicles in storage, which perhaps isn’t surprising when you consider that China has been rapidly modernizing its military and that stockpiles usually contain older models.

China also has one of the world’s largest fleets of armored fighting vehicles, second only to the United States. Breaking down that headline number, we can also see that they have the largest number of light tanks, wheeled guns, and infantry fighting vehicles. 

CategoryVehiclesGlobal rank
Main battle tanks4,7001
Light tanks1,3301
Wheeled guns1,2501
Infantry fighting vehicles8,2001
Armored personnel carriers3,6045
Airborne combat vehicles1802
Amphibious assault vehicles9902
Total20,2543

This is equipment that would be integral if China were to make an attempt to reunify Taiwan with the mainland by force, where lightly armored mechanized units need to move with speed to occupy the island before Western allies can enter the fray. It’s worth noting that China also has one of the world’s largest fleets of amphibious assault vehicles.

End of the Tank?

Many commentators at the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, were quick to predict the end of the tank, however, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the tank’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

With the U.S. and China both developing remote and autonomous armored vehicles, tanks could be quite different in the future, but there is nothing else that matches them for firepower, mobility, and survivability on the modern battlefield today.

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