One of the most significant contributions of the ROAD project is that it provides appropriate data for examining the relationship between the local environment and actual political behavior. While, political scientists have recognized that local context affects political behavior, the kind of detailed information need to test hypotheses regarding this relationship has heretofore been unavailable. An analysis of this type using the ROAD project files might consider a variety of electoral variables, including voter turnout, the vote for various candidates, registration rates, and partisan differentials in voting or registration. The explanatory variables in such an analysis would consists of census variables, including education levels, racial composition, and urbanicity.
Examining the correlates of voting behavior necessitates using both census and electoral data. The MCD-group level files combine these two types of data at their lowest unit of aggregation. For certain states, these MCD-groups are actually MCDs because no precincts cross MCD boundaries. MCD-groups can also be mapped with our ROAD Map files.
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