Up to now, we've been somewhat disappointed with Google's election maps. But their latest offering for Pennsylvania does a great job of merging election results with demographics via maps, charts, and even a spreadsheet.
The Google Lat Long Blog has the details. We hope the Google Elections Team goes back and produces this sort of county-level analysis for all states.
Our guess is that similar precinct-level maps and charts may be on the way from Google. But this is unlikely to happen on a nationwide scale until the 2012 election. By then, most states will have produced precinct-level datasets depicting the 2008 election as part of the 2010 census redistricting and reapportionment cycle.
In the meantime, we've produced precinct-level Google Earth maps for eight states showing the 2004 election.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Google Gets it Right in PA
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
More Bush-Gore
Bush-Gore precinct maps in Google Earth KMZ format are now available via the Google Earth forum for two additional late primary states -- Indiana (May 6) and West Virginia (May 13).
With Kentucky (May 20) sandwiched in between, it would have been nice to include the Bluegrass State as well. But, alas, there are very few counties where the election data from 2000 matches the 2000 census precinct geography.
The Google Earth files are organized into folders sorted by county,allowing for faster display and easier export to Google Maps. See this map of Kanawah County, WV (Charleston).
As in the Kanawah County Google Map, you may wish to make the colors a little more transparent for Google Maps. You can do this by doing a search and replace on the statewide KML file -- search for
West Virginia election data could not be matched to precinct boundaries in Cabell County and a few other areas. Indiana is more spotty -- precincts reflecting approximately 80% of the votes cast in the 2000 election are displayed.
There is a lot more demographic and election data available for West Virginia via FairVote2020's West Virginia interactive map. Also, at the end of the web page, you'll find Bush-Gore and 2000 Election Day turnout maps in Adobe format for 60 cities and towns.
This is the first time we have produced a map for Indiana, so you'll have to rely on the SocioEcon Mapper for additional info on Indiana neighborhoods.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Bush-Gore by 2000 Precinct in Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania primary is just a month away. There is probably a statewide GIS database showing Bush-Kerry by precinct, but the gatekeepers at the political party headquarters will never make it available to the public.
Fortunately, Pennsylvania is a state where a Bush-Gore map is just about as useful. So we have uploaded a precinct-level Google Earth map showing 2000 presidential election results in a head-to-head Bush-Gore contest.
You can download the KMZ file from the Google Earth forum, where we have uploaded several Google Earth precinct-level maps from other states showing the 2004 election.
The KML file is organized by county to make it easy to export precincts into Google Maps. Lehigh County (Allentown) is shown below.
View Larger Map
The FairVote2020 Pennsylvania interactive map was probably the most heavily used map on our website prior to the 2004 election. You can query that map for a lot more demographic and voting data than you get with the Google Earth map.
If you need detailed paper maps, you can download Adobe maps for 55 places at the end of the PA interactive map web page.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Felon Disenfranchisement by State
An estimated five million people nationwide are ineligible to vote because of a felony conviction, according to The Sentencing Project. Of these, three-fourths (3.5 million) are no longer incarcerated.
Felon Disenfranchisement Rates by State in 2004
The map below shows the percentage of the voting age population by state that was ineligible to vote in 2004 due to felony convictions.
View Larger Map
The convicted felon population includes incarcerated felons, as well as probationers, parolees and those who have completed their sentences. But felon disenfranchisement varies widely across states depending on state law. Maine and Vermont allow all felons (including those incarcerated) to vote. Kentucky and Virginia have the most restrictive laws, allowing ex-felons the right to vote only when granted by the state after a special appeal.
The Sentencing Project estimates that nationwide there are about two million disenfranchised African American felons, of whom nearly one million are ex-felons who have completed their sentences.
If you sort on the % African American Disenfranchised 2004 column in the interactive table below, you will see extremely high percentages in many states. Ten states had African American disenfranchisement rates above 15% in 2004. Rates for several of these states (for example, Wyoming) are likely skewed due to correctional facilities with out-of-state inmates who return to their home states after release from prison. But there are others in this group with sizable resident African American populations where skewing is not an issue -- i.e., Virginia, Florida, Delaware, and Alabama.
View Expanded Interactive Table
Current State Policy
Five states --Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Nebraska, and Rhode Island -- have implemented major policy changes since 2004. The interactive chart below breaks out states according to their general policy of voting rights for felons.
View Interactive Chart
You can review details on policy changes (major and minor) that have occurred since 2004 via annual updates prepared by The Sentencing Project.
A Decade of Reform: Felony Disenfranchisement Policy in the United States (October 2006)
2006 Annual Update
2007 Annual Update
Sources and Additional Information
The charts and maps displayed above are based on data and an interactive map prepared by the The Sentencing Project. Policy changes that have occurred since December 2004 are not reflected in the numbers.
The Sentencing Project data is not completely consistent with data we used to calculate voter registration rates in previous posts. Those maps and charts rely on survey estimates from the Census Bureau's 2004 Current Population Survey, which excludes persons in correctional facilities and halfway houses from the population base. Non-incarcerated disenfranchised felons are included in the CPS, which means that the voter eligible unregistered population is overestimated by the CPS in states where voting rights are not restored to felons upon release from prison.
In addition to the felon disenfranchisement material from The Sentencing Project, information on this important issue is available on web pages developed by the ACLU (2008 toolkit), the Advancement Project, the Brennan Center, MALDEF, NAACP, and the Prison Policy Institute.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
African American Voter Registration Rates by State
In a previous chart, we noted that there are over 7 million Latino citizens who are not registered to vote. Nationally, African-American citizens have a much higher voter registration rate than Latino citizens -- 69% to 58%. But at 7.5 million, the unregistered African American population is just as numerous.
The chart below shows that younger African Americans are less likely to be registered to vote than their parents. About 1.7 million college-age African Americans (43%) are not registered.
The map below shows state-by-state voter registration rates (as a percentage of black voting age population) reported by African Americans for the 2004 presidential election. Registration rates range from a low of 49.7% in New York to a high of 87.6% in Missouri.
Click a state on the map to see detailed stats.
(percent of the AA voting age population)
View Larger Map
Due to statistical sampling issues, rates for several states with relatively small numbers of African Americans were not calculated by the Census Bureau. These states are shown in white on the map.
After discounting for the higher non-citizen African American population in states such as New York and Florida, there is less interstate variation. Massachusetts has the lowest African-American citizen registered voter rate -- 54.2%.
View Map of African American Registration Rates by State
(percent of citizen voting age population)
You can review similar state-by-state maps depicting Latino voter registration rates via the links below.
View Map of Latino Voter Registration Rates by State
Just one state on the Latino registration by voting age map -- New Mexico -- has a rate above 50%.
Once non-citizens are removed from the voting age base, Latino voter registration rates improve markedly -- from a low of 33.3% in Tennessee to a high of 76% in Ohio.
(percent of citizen voting age population)
Non-Hispanic White Voter Registration Rates by State
Tennessee (64.1%) has the lowest white registered voter rate as a percentage of the white voting age population, while North Dakota is highest (89%).
(percent of voting age population)
Sources and Additional Information
These maps and charts are based on a spreadsheet (see table 4a) from the Census Bureau website -- Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2004. A detailed narrative report released in 2006 can be downloaded here.
Non-incarcerated disenfranchised felons are included in the CPS, which means that the voter eligible unregistered population is overestimated by the CPS in states where voting rights are not restored to felons upon release from prison. See our next post for details on felon disenfranchisement.
Do you need more specific registration detail for local GOTV efforts? Most of the interactive maps we produced leading up to the 2004 election have voter registration data mapped thematically. Four GOTV map sets -- Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina -- show the unregistered African American population by precinct and include hundreds of printer-ready Adobe maps for canvassing.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Zillow Neighborhood Demographic and Poverty Stats
This KMZ file aggregates basic population and poverty demographics for the Zillow neighborhood boundaries.
View in Google Earth (7.5 mb)
We used census block group data from the SF1 and SF3 file of the 2000 census. The map is color-coded by the percentage of the population living at or below the poverty level.
Neighborhood boundaries are sorted by city and state in the sidebar. For faster display, the initial map shows Washington, DC only. Click boxes on the sidebar to display additional states. Use Ctrl-click on the map to display the population and poverty stats by neighborhood.
Block groups are often split by neighborhood boundaries. For the population data by race and ethnicity, it is possible to develop more accurate estimates using block-level data from the SF1 file. However, for the poverty data, block groups represent the smallest unit reported by the Census Bureau.
In a few instances (less than 1 percent), neighborhood estimates could not be derived due to topology errors when converting from the original source Zillow shapefiles. (This includes all of Wake County-Raleigh, NC). You can identify these discrepancies by overlaying the non-color-coded KMZ file posted in the previous entry.
For more detail, remember that you can always overlay SF1 and SF3 datasets from gCensus as discussed in a previous post.
The neighborhood boundaries are made available in shapefile format by Zillow.com under a Creative Commens License.
The entire KMZ file is too large to display in Google Maps, but you can break it up into city-by-city KMZ files and save to Google My Maps.
You'll also need to copy the legend to the state or city folder you have created.
View Larger Map
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Zillow Neighborhoods
Here is something that might be useful for voter registration and GOTV efforts. This Google Earth KMZ file contains boundaries for nearly 7,000 neighborhoods in 150 cities. The file is based on shapefiles released by Zillow.com yesterday.View in Google Earth (6.5 mb)
State- by-state shapefiles are available here:
http://www.zillow.com/labs/NeighborhoodBoundaries.htm
Additional details are posted on the Zillow Blog.
Ctrl-Click on the map to display the city and region ID in addition to the neighborhood name.
For faster load time, Google Earth initially displays boundaries and labels for Arizona only. Click on the sidebar boxes to display additional states.
Labels are sorted by state and city in the sidebar. At some point, we may update the file to include socioeconomic data estimates from the SF3 file of the 2000 census.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Unregistered Latino and Asian-American Citizens
There are about 7 million Latino citizens in the U. S. who are not registered to vote. The table and chart in the figure below show that 5 million of the unregistered Latinos are ages 18 to 44 -- roughly half of the Latino citizen population for that age group.
Over 95% of all Latino citizens who are not registered to vote live in areas defined by the census tracts identified in our previous post. This presents an enormous opportunity and challenge for civic engagement groups working in these areas.
The aggregate number of unregistered Asian-American citizens (3 million) is not as high as the Latino unregistered citizen population, but the percent unregistered is across-the-board higher.
You can get a spreadsheet breaking out voter registration rates by state for citizens of all races and age groups from the Census Bureau website -- Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2004. (See tables 4a, 4b, and 4c.)
Monday, January 14, 2008
Estimated Latino 18+ citizens (2006) by tract
Click graphic for larger image.These estimates can be used to help set targets for voter registration efforts in Latino neighborhoods.
The tracts are sorted by state, county, and place. For faster load time, Google Earth initially displays Wisconsin only. Click on the sidebar boxes to display additional states.
Use the gCensus web form found here to obtain tract boundaries in KMZ format for your areas of interest.
No census tract in ME, NH, VT, or WV met the 50 person threshold.
The 2006 citizen counts are adjusted to take into account population change.
Source: Derived from 2000 Census SF 4 file and Caliper Corporation Time Series Data 2006.
See also: Latino Registered Voters in CA by Precinct (2004). Unfortunately, we are unaware of publicly available information that would allow us to replicate this for states other than California.
Estimated Asian 18+ citizens (2006) by tract
The Google Earth KMZ file depicted in the map below contains over 6,500 census tract centroids, representing all census tracts with an estimated 50 or more Asian-Americans of voting age who are citizens as of July, 2006.
Click graphic for larger image.These estimates can be used to help set targets for voter registration efforts in Asian-American neighborhoods.
The tracts are sorted by state, county, and place.
Use the gCensus web form found here to obtain tract boundaries in KMZ format for your areas of interest.
No census tract in ID, MT, ND, SD, WV, or WY met the 50 person threshold.
Source: Derived from 2000 Census SF 4 file and Caliper Corporation Time Series Data 2006.