| partisan_lean_district {fivethirtyeight} | R Documentation |
FiveThirtyEight's Partisan Lean
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.