Next: The ROAD Crew
Up: Preface
Previous: Introduction
At the inception of the ROAD Project, the Harvard-MIT Data
Center received a donation of an
extremely detailed and extensive set of election data from numerous
offices in electoral precincts in every state and the District of
Columbia. These data were collected during the 1990s redistricting
process at a cost of approximately $3.5 million. The data were used
for practical political and legal purposes by a wide variety of
minority groups over the last few years. The aim of the ROAD Project is to
make these data useful for academic purposes -- to clean and document
the data, to supplement the data with 3,725 variables (such as race,
income, and education) from the U.S.
Census, to make it possible to draw
geographic maps with all the political and census data, and to make
all of this generally available to the scholarly community.
These data represent an unparalleled opportunity for political
scientists, political and economic geographers, quantitative
historians, sociologists, and others to learn about electoral
behavior, the political characteristics of local community context,
electoral geography, the role of minority groups in elections and
legislative redistricting, split ticket voting and divided government,
elections under federalism, and numerous other topics of central
importance to many disciplines.
Some examples:
- With few exceptions, scholars until now have had access to
district-level (i.e. state or constituency)
electoral information at best, usually for only one
office at a time. Presidential election results broken down by
congressional districts are impossible to obtain except for a few
recent years, and are of dubious quality; more detailed
disaggregation is usually unobtainable. In contrast, our data can
provide presidential (and other) election results broken down by the
much smaller State House districts and even show detailed geographic
variation across precincts within a State House district. This can
be supplemented by voter turnout or party registration, race and
occupation, as well as much other information.
- A recent state legislative data collection project led by
Malcolm Jewell provided valuable district-level data to scholars who
continue to discover much useful knowledge. Precinct-level data
will increase the resolution of our knowledge of electoral politics
substantially. In contrast to data on the 50 States, 435 U.S.
House Districts, 1,916 State Senate Districts, and even the 4,675
districts of the lower house of state legislatures, the
approximately 170,000 precincts in the U.S. provide considerably
more detailed information. They contain information about small,
local communities, with much more variation than the higher level
aggregates.
- Scholars using electoral data recognize the geographical nature
of electoral data, but they have only rarely been able to access
geographical information. As a result, the vast majority of
published analyses, even those on topics such as redistricting, have
necessarily ignored the geographic placement of districts. The
ROAD Project data enables scholars to study the geographic nature of
American politics and to draw maps easily. That is, not only are
precinct-level data available, but we provide the data in geographic
formats, providing links between districts. In particular, scholars
will be able to use mapping software, such as ArcView or MapInfo, to
analyze geographical features of American politics and to merge them
with other types of geographical data.
- For the first time, scholars will be able to study data from
numerous offices at many different levels of aggregation -- from
precincts, to state assembly districts, to state senate districts,
to U.S. House districts, or to states. (Counties and other
aggregation levels are also possible.) Even without survey data,
this will make it possible to study how the same voter groups cast
their ballots across many different offices. ROAD data will
enable more detailed study of split ticket voting and of the factors
leading to divided government at many levels, for any or all states.
- The ROAD Project data should make possible many new studies of
legislative redistricting, and associated analyses and forecasts of
political and racial fairness, compactness, the consequences of
equal population constraints on gerrymanderers, and related issues.
These data should also make possible new studies of aggregation bias
in electoral data.
- This is the first dataset to be generally available to the
academic community that is on par in terms of quality and quantity
with the data politicians and political strategists have been using
for decades to target campaign resources. As a result, this data
set could also produce a new, more detailed type of study of
campaign strategy, with all the local flavor of V.O. Key's (1949)
classic book, Southern Politics, but on a massive and
comprehensive nationwide scale.
Next: The ROAD Crew
Up: Preface
Previous: Introduction