|
How to Generate Election Data RankingsYou have the ability to generate lists of states, counties (and more) across various presidential election categories by using the form on the Rankings page. Here are the various options from which you can choose:
This site has detailed presidential results for every general election for all major candidates (and many minor ones) back to 1900. To begin generating rakings, select a Year from the dropdown. Then choose a category from the Data dropdown. There are currently 5 options: Votes, Vote %, Margin (of victory), Margin % and Estimated Turnout %. The Margin categories and Turnout do not depend on any selected candidate; Turnout considers all votes which were cast, and not just ones for a particular candidate. Margin is always computed as the difference between the number of votes received by the overall winning candidate in the selected year -- the one who received the most popular votes, not necessarily the most electoral votes -- and the overall second-place finisher in that year. Therefore even in as year such as 1992, where third-party candidate Ross Perot did win some counties and finished second in some others, the Margin is still always calculated based on votes won by Bush and Clinton. Lists of Margins display the amount (or percentage) of the margin of victory, along with the name of the winning candidate in that area. Estimated turnout is based on the voting age population of an area -- not the number of "registered" voters. If you see a number greater than 100%, don't panic; it just means that the population estimate, although as accurate as possible given the limitations of the data, is likely not as accurate as it should be. In the past the Census Bureau only provided population figures every 10 years; for election years not ending in zero, the population must be estimated along with the proportion of those who have attained voting age. When you change the dropdown pertaining to election Year the list of Candidates will automatically update to show the names of those who ran in that year. There is also always an option for All Candidates and one for Other, whch covers all candidates not listed explicitly. Four levels of Geography are available: state, county, metropolitan ("metro") areas and designated market areas. If you are generating a lengthy list of rankings, you may wish to have areas from one particular state stand out in the list. To accomplish this, use the Highlight this state dropdown and select the desired state. Any entry in the rankings which contains that state will be highlighted in red. The remaining user inputs deal with filtering the output: You can select a specific state ("Limit to this state") for which to display rankings. Enter a Total votes limit to exclude smaller areas from the rankings. Only areas which cast a total of votes greater that the number you enter will be included in the rankings. Then enter the number of Results to display. For this box and the one above, zero is used to indicate that no limits are desired. Finally select the Sort order, which determines whether the rankings are displayed from highest-to-lowest (Descending) or lowest-to-highest (Ascending). All of the places shown in the output of the rankings are clickable. Click on an item in the output to visit the page for that state, county, etc. |