Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Primaries – March 15, 2016

Who will win your state, your county, your city, your precinct? Using public data and free online mapping tools anyone can analyze an election.

Steps to analyzing an election:
1. Map boundaries: States; townships, precincts
2. Election data –possible sources include:
–county websites;
–US Census http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/
–United States Election Project http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/voter-turnout-data
–Esri Open Data http://opendata.arcgis.com/
3. Election results from previous years to observe trends and to make predictions.

Screen Shot 2016-03-14 at 8.18.55 AMRecently I participated in the “Do-it-yourself (DIY) Apps” MOOC by Esri, http://www.esri.com/mooc/diy-geo-apps. I can’t say enough good things about this MOOC. I’m excited to put into practice the cool things I learned, enjoyed the conversations among the other 9,000+ participants and look forward to the next Esri MOOC. In one of my favorite DIY exercises, I developed an election map which shows voter turnout in Capital Township, Illinois for the November 4, 2014 midterm election. This election included all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 33 or 34 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate, 36 governors, many state officials. On the municipal level, mayors and other officials, as well as many referendums and initiatives, might have been on the ballot. Nationwide, voter turnout for non-presidential elections is lower than for presidential elections. Click on the image to the left to see a map showing voter turnout by precinct in Capital Township, Illinois. This map was created using data from the Sangamon County Website–registered voters and voters who cast ballots. I also enriched a layer with total population.

It will be interesting to compare the turnout in the 2014 midterm election to the 2016 presidential election.


The video shows the steps to creating a map showing voter turnout in Capital Township, Illinois.