Tag: Presidential Results by CD

Last week I wrote about a new crowdsourcing project we’re undertaking here at SSP: compiling presidential voting results by congressional district. Here’s a quick status report:

• We’ve figured out ways to calculated pres-by-CD for a little over half the states. See this spreadsheet, which anyone can edit.

• However, there are many states where we don’t have a planned method for calculating the numbers. If you have thoughts about how to figure out those states, please add them (and any links you have to official or soon-to-be-official results).

• Separately, if you’ve started doing work on some actual numbers, I strongly encourage you to share that work in separate Google spreadsheets. I’ve added a new column on the right in the “mothership” spreadsheet called “Calculations.” Please post URLs to any other spreadsheets you’ve created to crunch the data.

And if you have any other ideas for this project, please share them here in comments. Thanks!

UPDATE: Here’s a very simple example of what I mean by “showing your work.” The CT SoS very kindly makes raw presidential vote totals by CD available – you can see them in this PDF. I’ve uploaded a Google spreadsheet into which I’ve imported those numbers from the PDF, then did some super-simple math to calculate the percentages in each district.

Even if you’re working with something more complicated like counties or precincts, you can and should create something similar to my CT sheet. That way, everyone can see what data you’re using and verify that things look right.

UPDATE 2: Thanks to an awesome find by statsgeek, I put together a spreadsheet for MN as well. There are two tabs – “Formatted Data” is just a pretty condensed version of the raw data, which you can see in all its glory in the second tab. The state of MN actually made this extremely easy, going so far as to calculate the percentages each candidate got. It was just a matter of parsing the file properly and digging out the right numbers.

(Bumped.)

A favorite reference for election junkies like those of us who inhabit this site is, of course, presidential results by congressional district. Unfortunately, most states don’t publish this data,  but it’s reliably churned out by a firm called Polidata every four years. It’s a difficult task, though, because it usually involves crunching data on a precinct level (and also figuring out what the hell to do with absentee ballots), so Polidata typically releases its findings some time in March after a presidential races.

But the good news is that, working together, we can come up with some preliminary data for at least some states. There are at least three types of states where we can get this data relatively easily:

1) States with just one at-large district (duh), like Montana.

2) States which actually publish presidential results by CD, such as Virginia.

3) States where district lines follow county lines or, in New England, township lines (or at least follow them closely), like Iowa.

Where we need help (at this stage) is in figuring out which states fall into the second and third categories. I know California also releases results by CD, but I believe a few other states do as well. And Arkansas and West Virginia follow county lines, but some other states probably do, too.

Also, let’s use this thread for brainstorming about other ways we might try to figure out presidential results by CD (short of acquiring detailed precinct-by-precinct data). Please share your thoughts in comments.

UPDATE: Jeffmd observes that some states offer easy-to-use precinct data, so where available, that might be an option as well. If you’re aware of any states which provide this information, please let us know that as well.

UPDATE 2: I’ve created a public Google Docs spreadsheet that we can use to compile a list of data sources. Please feel free to input any helpful information you’re aware of. Note that we’re not looking for the actual numbers just yet – rather, we want to know where we can find the numbers (and what format – ie, CD, county, precinct, etc. – we should be looking for). And if you are adding a URL, please use TinyURL.