Voting Data

The two graphs show that (at least in the short run) voter turnout for different income levels hasn’t changed significantly over time. However, higher income households are shown to have higher turnout than lower income households. Many factors could be contributing to this trend such as education levels, accessibility, and other confounding factors.

Voter turnout seemed to increase with age according to both graphs. The younger demographics tended to have voter turnouts between 45 and 55% while the older demographics show a significantly higher turnout. One conclusion a person could draw from this data is that older generations tend to be more involved in politics due to several confounding reasons (experience with voting in previous elections, education).

Voter turnout was greater for native-born citizens than naturalized citizens for both 2016 and 2020. Additionally, voter turnout increased for both groups from 2016 to 2020. There are a number of factors that could contribute to this: social media could increase voter turnout overall. Native-born citizens could be more aware of election times than naturalized citizens as well.

Voter turnout varied by race, with White, non-Hispanic voters having the highest rates. The lowest rates were held by Asian and Hispanic voters. There are likely many factors that contribute to these turnout rates, among them education and awareness of elections.

Michael Agsam, Philip Tallmadge

Prof. Kumar

EG Computing

READ ME

This document lays out our development process for data analysis and website creation

With an alarming increase in political polarization throughout the US in the past few decades, voting in elections has never been more important. Analysts have been studying trends in political voting in order to understand our nation’s increasing polarization. One important trend analysts have been studying is voter turnout. To understand these trends, analysts focus on looking at voter demographics to determine how certain characteristics influence voter turnout. Our project aims to also explore how different aspects about elections influence voter turnout.

This project’s findings could be of interest to data analysts, politicians (specifically for campaigning), PACS, or any other political organization. Our data was synthesized together through bar charts, choropleths, and pie charts. One interesting finding we encountered was that (according to the past three elections), voter turnout has slowly decreased in all states except the few swing states. Another interesting finding is that older generations in recent elections have higher voter turnout than younger generations.

Our project looks to answer how different aspects about elections influence voter turnout. In order to best answer this question, we first identified a set of sub questions which analyzed how one characteristic about the U.S. or its voters affected percentage voter turnout. We then assigned each question a corresponding visual representation that would best convey the characteristic’s impact. Our main questions regarding voter turnout include:

How has voter turnout changed from the 2012 election to the 2020 election? (Choropleth visualization)

Does your income level affect voter turnout? (Two Bar Chart)

How does age demographic affect voter turnout? Which demographics have higher voter turnout? How has voter turnout for each age group changed over the past two elections? (Two Bar Charts)

Does the level of citizenship (naturalized or native born) impact a voter’s likelihood of voting? (Two Pie Charts)

How does race affect voter turnout? Which race demographics have higher voter turnout? How has voter turnout for each race changed over the past two elections? (Two Bar Charts)

To get this data, we used spreadsheets from the Census Bureau which contained voter population data regarding each question. We wrote a python script for each question that cleaned data, isolated specific information from the tables, graphed findings, and stored these graphs into html files.

We organized our data and visualization code into a shared Google Drive folder to maintain accessibility and order for our files. Each question’s visualization was made using the graphing tools provided by Python and Google Colab and put together under a Bootstrap rendered website framework.

Voter Turnout over Time:

Overall, the majority of the US (with exception to certain swing states such as Colorado and Ohio) saw a decrease in voter turnout. This graph showed that the more densely populated states (New York, California, Texas) saw a more rapid decrease in voter turnout over the course of time while less densely populated states saw a more gradual decrease. This trend of decreasing voter turnout could be due to the decreasing turnout from rural voters and younger demographics.

Voter turnout versus Income:

The two graphs show that (at least in the short run) voter turnout for different income levels hasn’t changed significantly over time. However, higher income households are shown to have higher turnout than lower income households. Many factors could be contributing to this trend such as education levels, accessibility, and other confounding factors.

Voter turnout versus Age Group:

Voter turnout seemed to increase with age according to both graphs. The younger demographics tended to have voter turnouts between 45 and 55% while the older demographics show a significantly higher turnout. One conclusion a person could draw from this data is that older generations tend to be more involved in politics due to several confounding reasons (experience with voting in previous elections, education).

Voter turnout vs Citizenship:

Voter turnout was greater for native-born citizens than naturalized citizens for both 2016 and 2020. Additionally, voter turnout increased for both groups from 2016 to 2020. There are a number of factors that could contribute to this: social media could increase voter turnout overall. Native-born citizens could be more aware of election times than naturalized citizens as well.

Voter Turnout vs Race:

Voter turnout varied by race, with White, non-Hispanic voters having the highest rates. The lowest rates were held by Asian and Hispanic voters. There are likely many factors that contribute to these turnout rates, among them education and awareness of elections.