Dataset of the Day: Republican Victory in Virginia

The big news this week was the republican victories in Tuesday’s general elections. Since I work in Arlington Virginia (although admittedly I am a Baltimore native and by no means familiar with local Virginian politics) I thought it would be appropriate to take a closer look at Virginia’s gubernatorial election in which Republican Bob McDonnell won by 17 percentage points. Many people, mainly republicans, are claiming that this race was a reflection of public opinion on the job that President Obama has done thus far. Others say that McDonnell won due to low voter turnout compared to the presidential election a year ago. Some just chalk it up to a weak democratic candidate. No one outside of Virginia seems to know for sure (that is the nature of local politics I guess) so I thought I would use Maker!’s analytical tools to try to test out my own theories.

With news of increasing violence and American deaths in Afghanistan lately, I thought maybe areas with more war causalities would have shown their discontent of continued wars in the voting booths. The map below shows the election results by county along with the number of causalities by city from icasualties.org/. While no strong pattern emerges, it seems that some areas with higher causalities voted less for McDonnell. The apparent connection could be due in part to higher populated areas which have more men and women fighting in the wars and who lean more towards the democrats.

Next, I thought maybe areas that have experienced a dramatic increase in unemployment in the past year were more likely to vote republican because of disappointment of the lack of improvement in the economy since Obama took office. To find out, I used the correlation tool in Maker! to see if there is any relationship at the county level between the 12 month change in unemployment from September 2008 to September 2009 and the percentage of votes for McDonnell. You can see in Makers!’s results in the image below that there is no correlation. Ok, I thought, maybe areas that had lower overall unemployment in September 2009 voted republican. Again, I did a correlation using the tool in Maker!. And again, no relationship. Lastly I decided to look at the percentage of voter turnout. If it’s true that small voter turnout can explain why the republicans won then there should be a correlation between the voter turnout and the percentage of votes for McDonnell. Third time is a charm, right? It appears not. Again, no correlation. Well, a failed attempt at explaining the election results has at least provided a good example of how there is nothing like a great mapping tool to disprove bad hypotheses. If you think you know why the republicans won feel free to find data or use some already in Finder! and let Maker! put your theory to the test. Good luck!

Also check out our dashboard on the Virginia Election 2009 to find more great datasets and maps.