Testimony before the House Administration Committee
After being criticized for exploiting local government election offices to juice Democratic voter turnout, [Mark] Zuckerberg commissioned his own report highlighting the fact that “more Republican jurisdictions, defined as municipalities that voted for Trump in 2020, applied for and received grants.”[11]
However, this was deeply misleading. […]
In 2016, Donald Trump won Georgia by five points, but in 2020, following the massive infusion of Zuckerberg’s cash, he came up around 11,000 votes short of winning the state again.[13] On average, counties in Georgia that were funded by Zuck Bucks saw an increase in the Democratic share of the vote that was more than twice that of counties that did not receive any Zuck Bucks funding.[14]
Similarly, what happened in Georgia played out in other swing states. For instance, the CTCL awarded a total of $10.1 million in grants in Wisconsin, but nearly $8.5 million of that went to just five cities of Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine — cities where Biden’s average margin of victory was over 37 points.[15] Wisconsin was another state that Trump won in 2016 that he very narrowly lost in 2020.
Ultimately, Doyle and Oliver’s report concludes that “the distribution of the CTCL program’s grant amounts — both in absolute and per capita terms — shows, unequivocally, a systematic bias in favor of Democratic jurisdictions.”[16] And further, the larger grants that were awarded revealed a “partisan pattern of funding [that] was especially apparent in swing states.” Overall, a county that voted for Biden was over 3.5 times more likely to be funded by CTCL than a county Trump won. Trump counties received an average of $0.59 per capita in Zuck Buks, while Biden counties received $2.85 per capita.[17]
Source: Mollie Hemingway