The first time I voted (back in the 1980s), I was very surprised that I didn't have to show any kind of identification. I assumed it was because I lived in a small North Carolina town of 300 people where "everybody knew everybody" ... but they told me that nobody
Tag: election
Are your friends passing around clever memes (supposedly) featuring something your favorite actor said, or sharing news articles that you think might be "fake news"? If there's even a hint of data analyst in you, then you probably check the actual data, and confirm or disprove the supposed facts yourself. I
After the recent presidential election, I was updating my graphs of the voter registration data and noticed that the number of registered voters decreased after the election. At first I thought that was odd, but then I realized that maybe inactive voters were being purged. I wanted to find out
Parents are always proud of their kids, and think their kids are better than all the other kids. I guess it might be a little bit that way with mapping software ... but I really do think I've got a pretty compelling example to show that SAS maps are better
In the US presidential election, each of the 50 states has a certain number of electoral votes, based on the population. Typically, most states cast all their electoral votes for the candidate who wins in their state (all or nothing). But states can split their electoral votes if they want
Elections in the US are a 'target rich environment' for data analysts. There are surveys and forecasts before the election, and the presentation of results during and after the voting. What's your favorite election-related graph of all time? For the current (2016) presidential election, my favorite graphs are on the
In the past, a large percentage of US workers have been union members, and the unions could exert a big influence on elections. How powerful are the unions these days, an where do they wield the most influence? Let's map it out... In 1954, almost 35% of US workers belonged to
Since this is an election year, I've been scrutinizing the voter registration data. One thing that surprised me is there are more female voters registered in NC than males. I wondered if this was consistent across all 100 counties, and created some charts to help visualize the data... First I went
How is it that 91% of the US didn't vote for either Hillary or Trump in the primary, but yet they're still the final two candidates in the presidential election? Let's break it down with a simple graph! I recently saw a really cool slideshow on the nytimes website, that answered
In recent years, more and more people have been registering as independent voters in the US, rather than Democrat or Republican - the independents now control well over 1/3 of the votes. Will they likely vote for the Democrat or Republican candidates in the upcoming election? Let's break down some numbers