ABOUT MEHELLO! My name is Riane Yates. I am a MS Public and Urban Policy graduate student at the New School. As part of my coursework and professional work, I delve into Texas politics and the politcial climate we live in as Texans daily. Here's some background on this project and why I'm passionate about it. Thanks for stoppying by!ABOUT THIS PROJECT
For the past 30 years, Texas has historically been a RED state. In 2016, Texas voted for Donald Trump (R) over Hillary Clinton (D) with almost a 10% spread. In 2018, during the midterm elections, Texas saw the party spread shrink to just a 2.6% win by Ted Cruz (R) over Beto O’Rourke (D). This spatial project seeks to illustrate the voting trends of Texans from the 2016 Presidential Election to the 2018 Midterm Election and provide a resource for individuals to find out who their Elected Officials are and if they want to support them in the 2020 election.
Since 1980, Texas has voted for the Republican candidate in each Presidential Election. Since 1994, Texas has had a Republican Governor and kept both U.S. Senate seats filled with Republican candidates. With 38 Electoral College votes and a population of 28.3 million – the political swing in Texas has a large impact across the country (Texas Secretary of State).
There have been many efforts over the past 30 years to gain some BLUE momentum in Texas – remember Wendy Davis? Each effort fell short. During the 2018 Midterm Elections, Texas saw voter turnout hit record levels – now called the Beto effect. In the 30 counties with the most registered voters, Texas saw a 78% increase in voter turnout during the 2018 Midterm Election in comparison to the 2012 Midterm Elections (Texas Tribune, 2018).
Overall, there was a clear democratic shift from the 2016 Presidential Election to the 2018 Midterm Election by percent swing lead. This is highlighted by the 154 counties that saw a more than 1 percent democratic shift, compared to the only 54 counties that saw a more than 1 percent republican shift. In total, 46 counties did not see more than a 1 percent swing in either direction.
With this shift in the Texas political climate, I wanted to provide a space for Texans to easily find information on their elected officials and see that their vote matters. Primarily, this project was executed with an interactive map that allows individuals to switch between TX House, TX Senate and US House districts and click through to see information on each elected official. In addition to this main map, there is a “story” page highlighting the change in political climate in Texas.
HOW IT CAME TOGETHER
ELECTED OFFICIALS INTERACTIVE MAP METHODOLOGY:
The bulk of my gis work for this project took place in developing data for the interactive elected official map. The closest platform to what I was trying to build that I could locate online was the Texas Tribune Elected Official Directory (https://www.texastribune.org/directory/). I decided to collect my data from this site, because it provides a thorough overview of each elected official on their own web page. To create the attribute tables, I collected the following data on each elected official: Name, District, Title (Party Affiliation), Contact Information (Email, phone, TX Tribune Website and twitter handle). Once I collected the data for all elected officials, I created three shapefiles - TX House, TX Senate and US House - and put them onto one map.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RESULTS & SIZE LEAD BY COUNTY MAP METHODOLOGY:
To identify election results by county for the 2016 Presidential Election, election results by county data was collected from The New York Times election tracker. A custom attribute table needed to be created with the following fields: County Name, Trump Votes, Clinton Votes, Total Votes, Percent Trump Votes, Percent Clinton Votes, Winner, Percent Size Lead (Republican), Percent Size Lead (Democrat). Winner was illustrated as RED or BLUE in graduated colors.
2018 MIDTERM ELECTION RESULTS & SIZE LEAD BY COUNTY METHODOLOGY:
To identify election results by county for the 2018 Midterm Election, election results by county data was collected from The New York Times election tracker. A custom attribute table needed to be created with the following fields: County Name, Cruz Votes, Beto Votes, Total Votes, Percent Cruz Votes, Percent Beto Votes, Winner, Percent Size Lead (Republican), Percent Size Lead (Democrat). Winner was illustrated as RED or BLUE in graduated colors.
ELECTION SWING BY COUNTY METHODOLOGY:
To identify the swing in votes by party affiliation by county, the 2016 Presidential Election and 2018 Midterm Election attribute tables were joined by county name. This provided comparative data for the Percent Size Lead in each county from 2016 to 2018. A final field was created, Percent Size Lead Swing. This percent change allowed us to see the shift from one party to another. Percent Size Lead Swing was illustrated in graduated colors from BLUE to RED.