Over 60 per cent of the Trump supporters also think Obama was not born in the US. Sometimes Hawaii does not feel like the rest of the US to me.
Bernie Sanders has raised money from over 2 million people. Most republicans get their money from a few big money donors so using ratios is not a meaningful statistic.
I think the essays help define you as a person and should be used to show your passion. e.g if your passion is physics writing about how exciting you thought QFT was might be appropriate.
When my kid did their Stanford essays a couple of years ago one of the questions was what historical event do you wish you could have witnessed. Their answer was The Catch. That has a lot of historical significance for the bay area and Stanford and helped to define them as a person.