partisan_lean_district: FiveThirtyEight's Partisan Lean

In fivethirtyeight: Data and Code Behind the Stories and Interactives at 'FiveThirtyEight'

Description

This directory contains the data for FiveThirtyEight's partisan lean, which is used in our [House] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house [Senate] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/senate and [Governor] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/governor/ forecasts.

Usage

partisan_lean_district

Format

A dataset with 435 rows representing votes and 4 variables

state

the state of the vote

district_number

the district_number of the vote

pvi_party

the party of the vote

pvi_amount

the Cook Partisan Voting Index of the vote

Note

The original dataset only has 2 columns: "district" and "pvi_538". I separated each of the 2 columns into two. For example, in row 1 of the dataset, the original "district" = "AK-1", and I separated it into "state" = "Arkansas" and "district_number" = "1"; the original "pvi_538" = "R+15.21", and I separated it into “pvi_party" = "R" and "pvi_amount" = "15.21". In addition, I used the full names for all states instead of abbreviations.

Source

Partisan lean is the average difference between how a state or district votes and how the country votes overall, with 2016 presidential election results weighted 50 percent, 2012 presidential election results weighted 25 percent and results from elections for the state legislature weighted 25 percent.

See Also

partisan_lean_state

fivethirtyeight documentation built on Oct. 7, 2021, 5:09 p.m.