elections for U.S. President, 1932-2012, by state

Description

Democratic share of the presidential vote, 1932-2012, in each state and the District of Columbia.

Usage

data(presidentialElections)

Format

• statecharacter, name of state

• demVotenumeric, percent of the vote for president won by the Democratic candidate

• yearnumeric, integer

• southlogical, TRUE if state is one of the 11 states of the former Confederacy

Note

1,047 observations, unbalanced panel data in long format. Hawaii and Alaska contribute data from 1960 onwards the District of Columbia contributes data from 1964 onward; Alabama has missing data for 1948 and 1964.

Source

David Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections http://uselectionsatlas.org

Examples

data(presidentialElections)
lattice::xyplot(demVote ~ year | state,
       panel=panel.lines,
       ylab="Democratic Vote for President (percent)",
       xlab="Year",
       data=presidentialElections,
       scales=list(y=list(cex=.6),x=list(cex=.35)),
       strip=strip.custom(par.strip.text=list(cex=.6)))

## Obama vs Kerry, except DC
y08 <- presidentialElections$year==2008
y04 <- presidentialElections$year==2004
tmpData <- merge(y=presidentialElections[y08,],
	         x=presidentialElections[y04,],
                 by="state")
tmpData <- tmpData[tmpData$state!="DC",]
xlim <- range(tmpData$demVote.x,tmpData$demVote.y)
col <- rep("black",dim(tmpData)[1])
col[tmpData$south.x] <- "red"

plot(demVote.y ~ demVote.x,
     xlab="Kerry Vote Share, 2004 (percent)",
     ylab="Obama Vote Share, 2008 (percent)",
     xlim=xlim,
     ylim=xlim,
     type="n",
     las=1,
     data=tmpData)
abline(0,1,lwd=2,col=gray(.65))
ols <- lm(demVote.y ~ demVote.x,
          data=tmpData)
abline(ols,lwd=2)	

text(tmpData$demVote.x,
     tmpData$demVote.y,
     tmpData$state,
     col=col,
     cex=.65)
legend(x="topleft",
       bty="n",
       lwd=c(2,2),
       col=c(gray(.65),"black"),
       legend=c("No Change from 2004","Regression"))
legend(x="bottomright",
       bty="n",
       text.col=c("red","black"),
       legend=c("South","Non-South"))