#voting data

      Even though this is the first project I plan to take up, I already feel the overwhelming need to shoot this blog in the metaphorical foot. This month, we’re going to be trying to talk politics. On the heels of the American midterm elections, it’s obvious that this kind of topic is on most people’s minds. Considering how the ‘Blue Wave’ was significantly different than the casual observer would expect, it is important to somewhat pick the minds of these voters and see their reasoning and other characteristics that lead them to vote as they do. So, we absolutely have to get our hands on some 2018 voting data! Personally, I’ve found that the CCES voting data is by far the best source to get data in a suitable format as to who each person in question voted for.

    Ah, well it seems that we are unable to get the voting data for the date we want. However, we can still browse other datasets within the site and find the 2016 voting data. So, we plan on turning a small political topic into a complete and utter political minefield this week.

                                                THE ISSUE

    Regardless of how you find the 2016 election, its significance is undeniable. Any time a complete political outsider is elected to office, it should be taken as a significant dissatisfaction of the populace with the current political establishment. This, of course, can be positive or negative depending on where the populace is taking issue. Some on the left would suspect that a lot of this voting turnout was largely based upon demographic lines- i.e. white Christian males with lower education were more likely to vote for Trump than for Hillary Clinton. This is based on the demographic related policies that Trump espoused (being much less lenient to immigrants than previous politicians). However, others on the left may say that this election was solely based on economic insecurities citing a Midwest disenfranchised with the previous administrations. On the right, many believe that Trump is a return to good Christian values, a bright economic future and an America First attitude. 

     What we can see here almost immediately is that the left and the right believe somewhat similar things in terms of the election of Trump- they only disagree in the positive or negative implication of his policies. The largest disagreement is found in the following: is the election of Donald Trump an economic outcry, a fight of demographics, or something else? This should be the focus of our first project. As we are going to go in-depth with a very open question, we are going to do weekly updates on this dataset and where the data will lead us in regards to this question. So, the goal should be to have this dataset interpreted by the end of the month.

                                         METHODOLOGY

     In order to do this in a suitable time, we are going to have to:

Import and Clean the Dataset

Exploratory Data Analysis

Determine Plausible Models and/or Tests

Create and Validate Models and/or Tests

Write Final Report

    The longest issue by far would be to take this .tab table and cleaning/modifying the dataset. I anticipate having this done by 11/17/2018.

     Exploratory Data Analysis is another lengthy process as we are simply following the data, therefore this should be done by 11/23/2018.

   Determining, Creating, and Validating Models and/or Tests should be rather quick and simple once we have had a good look at our data in Exploratory Data Analysis. Therefore, we should have this done by 11/26/2018.

     The Final Report will take a lot of writing and compiling everything we’ve made, so it should be done by 11/30/2018.

   Now that we have our dataset and our plan, we’ll get to working on finding out what we can about how people vote. I’ll be back at next Sunday with a detailed description of the dataset and what we’re going to have to be looking at. See you then!

Criminals (politicians, Russia?) using crowdfunding to pay other criminals to break in and steal voter registration data. Has your state been hacked?

Never forget, the Republican controlled Congress lead by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell  voted against funding election security in August 2018 even though Homeland Security warned that 21 states were targeted. All 21 states asked for funding and help! #VoteThemAllOut

"To our knowledge this represents the first reference on the criminal underground of actors selling or distributing lists of 2018 voter registration data," said researchers from Anomali Labs and Intel471, the two companies who spotted the forum ad.

"We estimate that the entire contents of the breach could exceed 35 million records"

Which States allow downloading voting information for FREE?

Researchers say the data contains details such as full name, phone numbers, physical addresses, voting history, and other voting-related information. It is worth noting that some states consider this data public and offer it for download for free, but not all states have this policy.

“When these lists are combined with other breached data containing sensitive information, e.g., social security number and driver’s license, on underground forums it provides malicious actors with key data points for creating a target profile of the US electorate.”, Anomali Labs

The list and pricing, as advertised by the hacker himself, is as follows below:

Montana - 1000$

Louisiana - 5000$ (3 Million Voters)

Iowa - 1100$

Utah - 1100$

Oregon - 500$

South Carolina - 2500$

Wisconsin - 12500$ (6 Million Voters)

Kansas - 200$

Georgia - 250$

New Mexico - 4000$

Minnesota - 150$

Wyoming - 500$

Kentucky - 2000$

Idaho - 1000$

Tennessee - 2500$

South Dakota - 2500$

Mississippi - 1100$

West Virginia - 500$

Texas - 1300$ (14 Million Voters)

The seller revealed the voter records count for only three of the databases --Louisiana (3 million), Wisconsin (6 million), and Texas (14 million)-- totaling 23 million records. He is asking for $42,200 for all 19 databases.

New States for Sale

"At the time of this report, the first of 19 available voter databases, Kansas, has been acquired and published," Anomali Labs said. 

"A second crowdfunding project, voted by forum members to select the next state, is close to 20.7% of its funding goal. Oregon currently leads the voting for the second state to be published."

"We believe this to be an alias for the forum administrator named 'Omnipotent' based on shared email address between Downloading and Omnipotent."

Furthermore, Omnipotent has a history of sharing voter databases on his forum. Before the new thread advertising voter records from 19 states, he also shared voter records on his forum from five other US states:

Washington 2018 Voter Database

Pennsylvania 2018 Voter Database

North Carolina 2018 Voter Database

Florida 2018 Voter Database

Connecticut 2018 Voter Database

Ohio 2018 Voter Database

In an email to Republican House candidates, former Speaker Bill O'Brien boasted House Republicans "outperformed all other offices above us on the ballot" in the 2012 election.

"In the aggregate, of all the discrete New Hampshire Republican election campaigns in 2012 – House Republicans, Senate Republicans, Republican candidates for Congress and the Republican nominees for President and Governor -- House Republicans achieved the highest percentage of votes," he wrote.

This is the last in a series of studies describing the partisan makeup of New Hampshire voting districts based on the 2008-2012 presidential vote in each district.

This map documents the partisan voting index for the five executive council districts. Previous posts took a look at the the state's cities and towns, House districts and Senate districts.

These maps document the partisan makeup of New Hampshire’s 204 state House districts. There are separate maps for the regular districts and the floterial districts, those districts that “float” over the regular districts to maintain the correct ratio of House members to residents.

I’ve updated my 2010 study documenting the partisan voting behavior of New Hampshire’s towns and cities.

For those new to the maps, I calculate a partisan index for each town based on the Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI), which compares how a given district votes relative to the nation as a whole.

The index objectively measures each district as a means to allow comparisons between districts. It is determined by averaging a district’s presidential voting results from the previous two elections and comparing it to the national results.

I have made one significant change from my original methodology. The original study compared the presidential vote for each town with the national vote. The new index, which I've labeled PVI-NH, compares the presidential vote for each town with the state-wide vote. Since New Hampshire, as a whole, has a PVI of D+1, this change effectively shifts the index by one point more Republican when compared to the original index.

For example, a D+2 PVI-NH means the town performed two points more Democratic than the state did as a whole in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. In this case, Pres. Obama would have received around 56% of the two-party vote compared to the state-wide two-party average of 54% for the two elections.