State-Level Education and Voter Turnout in 2016

Description

A simple data set on education and state-level (+ DC) turnout in the 2016 presidential election. This is inspired by what Pollock (2012) does in his book.

Usage

election_turnout

Format

A data frame with 51 observations on the following 13 variables.

year

the year of the presidential election (2016)

state

the state abbreviation

region

the state's Census region

division

the state's Census division

turnoutho

voter turnout for the highest office as percent of voting-eligible population (VEP)

perhsed

the percentage of the state that completed high school

percoled

the percentage of the state that completed college

gdppercap

an estimate of the state's GDP per capita

ss

is it a “swing state?”

trumpw

did Trump win the state?

trumpshare

the share of the vote Trump received

sunempr

the state-level unemployment rate entering Nov. 2016

sunempr12md

the state-level unemployment rate (12-month difference) entering Nov. 2016. Higher values indicate the unemployment rate is increasing entering Nov. 2016 relative to what it was entering Nov. 2015.

gdp

an estimate of the state's GDP

Details

Data were created in early 2017 for an upper-division course on quantitative methods. Educational attainment and division/region data come from the Census. Voter turnout/share data come from the Elections Project at George Mason University. GDP per capita estimates come from Bureau of Economic Analysis. Unemployment data come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and code to generate it was derived from a forthcoming publication of mine.