Introduction:

Time flies, the 2024 election is only a year away from people's lives, are you ready to vote? In this project, we will try to disentangle the relationship between various social factors and election results, and Our journey begins by looking through several datasets that include county election data, GDP per capita, and reliable information on average house prices. In the process of data analysis, we focused on the following questions that people concern, and the answers will also be revealed as you read through our project.

⁉️ Do GDP per capita have an effect on election results? 

⁉️ Will individuals residing in higher-priced housing affect voting outcomes? 

⁉️ Do those people who live in different areas tend to have different preferences on which party to choose? 

These questions form the crux of our investigation, driving us to explore the underlying reasons behind people's voting behaviors and uncover potential intersections among these factors. 

⁉️ Does one's preference for a political party sway under the influence of these factors?

As we piece together this captivating narrative, we envision a world where data illuminates the choice nature of Election. Our analysis reveals that there is a surprising correlation between people who are from different class will whether vote Democratic or Republican. Our goal is to reveal the parties' identity that affected people's choice in Election. For the benefit of future researchers, the codes of the project are public to everyone. 

Without further ado, let's get started!

History Context:

For more than a century, the Democratic and Republican parties have been the two most important political parties shaping the political landscape in the United States, and understanding their history and how their ideologies have changed over the course of history to shape what we see today can help more people understand which party is better for them to choose.

​​The history of the Democratic Party can be traced back to the 18th century. It grew out of the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and founded in 1828. The Democratic Party originally represented the interests of farmers. The Republican Party, on the other hand, was founded in 1854 and advocated the abolition of slavery and the promotion of civil rights.

During this time, the Republican Party was relatively liberal, while the Democratic Party was more conservative. Over time, however, the ideology of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party has changed a lot, and this change is mainly due to the expansion of government power by the Democratic Party, and is inseparable from the influence of the civil rights movement. During the civil rights movement of the last century, the Democratic Party began to seek reform of social problems in order to promote civil rights, while the Republican Party became more conservative during this period, a shift that continues today. In other words, the Democratic Party is perceived as liberal and the Republican Party as conservative.

So what is the difference between the two parties today? The distinction between the two parties is explained in the Encyclopedia Britannica:

“Democrats are generally considered liberal, while Republicans are seen as conservative. The Democratic Party typically supports a larger government role in economic issues, backing regulations and social welfare programs. The Republicans, however, typically want a smaller government that is less involved in the economy. This contrary view on the size of government is reflected in their positions on taxes—Democrats favor a progressive tax to finance the government's expanded role, while Republicans support lower taxes for all. However, Republicans do support a large budget for the military, and they often aggressively pursue U.S. national security interests, even if that means acting unilaterally. Democrats, however, prefer multilateralism. On social issues, Democrats seek greater freedoms, while Republicans follow more traditional values, supporting government intervention in such matters. For example, Democrats generally back abortion rights, while Republicans don’t. In terms of geography, Democrats typically dominate in large cities, while Republicans are especially popular in rural areas.”

Based on this passage, we can draw the conclusion that with the ideological changes in history, the characteristic of the Democratic Party today is to pay more attention to the equality of different groups in society, and they will pay more attention to social welfare and advocate the expansion of government intervention. At the same time, the Republican Party is characterized by limits on government intervention and a focus on national stability.

Lastly, here is a timeline made by Excel tool that shows the popularity rate of both parties from 1860 to today:

Theoretical lens:

We chose to focus on different factors of social class that correlate with political party identity to create a better understanding of how there is a differentiation in what makes someone more inclined to vote in a certain direction. But to better demonstrate the importance of this research, we explored theoretical lenses that best suit what our project is aiming towards. A theoretical lens that adds to the trajectory of our project is Marxism. Before explaining how Marxism ties to our project, it’s important to briefly state what Marxism entails:

Marxism is based on what is called the “Conflict Theory” that is the class system is the cause of societal conflict. It is a socio-economic and political theory that focuses on what would play into molding a society what it currently is. For instance, what exactly coincides with Marxism is that it aims to confront socio-economic struggles and how economic status has created what we no society to be. Marxism posits that what we are privy to and aware of creates these classes in society and that needs to change because everyone should be on the same level where resources are no longer restricted to certain classes. Everyone has equal open access to the same privileges and opportunities and this will intend to have social relations for all people where there is no more capitalism.

With Marxism, it’s important to address that it does focus on what social factors are focused on by different classes of people and that lens speaks to the focus of our group project topic. To utilize this lens in hounding in the different contributing factors for how or what factor makes someone more inclined to vote for a specific party can explain why the different classes/wealthy level of people might have a different choice on election voting as Marxism is about the socio-economic factors in society that affect the shaping of how our society function’s, and it reveals that people's mind is based on what class he is in since different class has different demand. Due to there are many underlying foundational issues with voting and how politics operate and more specifically the interaction in democracy, Marxism brings to light the problems that society encompasses with what the working class and other disadvantaged or marginalized people have to deal with and how that accompanies an influence in the decision making of voting.

Also, in our analysis, based on the relationship between different social classes and political parties, we will identify a general pattern to judge such as whether a certain welfare policies will have a tendency to favor a certain party. This theoretical method comes from formalism and structuralism.

Here is a mindMap for our project in both the Theoretical lens and Technical part:

Our Analysis & Interpretations:

First we want to discuss our limitations. We collected data from several different sources. Each of these sources have there own methodologies, and as result we will have to slightly different information This can be exemplified by the fact that some counties don’t exist in the edited data set or that some data is labeled numpy.NAN a placeholder for no information.

We have used inner merge over several datasets, resulting in hundreds of counties disappearing due to lack of information. Inner Merge is when you only keep the data if the record exists in both datasets.  This typically covers remote counties with small populations where information is limited or unavailable. This is especially true in the West east of the Sierra and Cascades where most of the land is sparsely populated excluding a few dense metros. This can be exemplified with the standard deviation of the population being slightly smaller than the unedited food access dataset(312896.7278) vs 314348.266753141. Despite these issues, most of the data is still intact, and we can still see the big picture. 

You can found more about it in our data critique page for detailed information of our data analysis!

Context: Heatmap of geographic distribution of Democrats and Republicans

Topic One: Political Identity and GDP Per Capita

             Adding to the complexity of the economic and political identity interplay is a density graph representation of county-level GDP per capita data from 2018, which we produced using the dataset from BEA. This graph provides a compelling illustration of the relationship between economic output and political leaning, further elucidating the dynamics at play.

The understanding of this relationship is crucial for effective policy-making. With such a clear demarcation in economic output and political identity, the challenge for policymakers is to craft legislation that addresses the needs of both sections of the electorate. The stark difference in priorities and needs between these groups makes the task even more challenging.

Understanding the relationship between GDP per capita and political identity is crucial for several reasons:

Firstly, it offers insights into the socio-economic dynamics that underpin voting behavior. It helps explain why certain communities are more likely to vote one way or another, providing a more nuanced understanding of political dynamics. 

Secondly, this relationship underscores the economic disparities that persist in the country. The stark difference in GDP contribution between Democrat and Republican-voting counties reflects a broader economic divide, with implications for wealth distribution, social mobility, and economic policy.

Topic Two: Political Identity and Housing Price

Upon examining the relationship between Starter House Prices and political affiliations, we found that Republicans exhibited slightly higher variance in house prices compared to Democrats. Specifically, when focusing on counties where Republicans won by a margin of 65% or more, the standard deviation of log-transformed Starter Housing Prices was 0.67, while strong Democrats had a standard deviation of 0.40.

      However, Starter House Prices were a bad candidate for an instrumental variable for Wealth. We will explain more in detail in the Data Critique part.

Conclusion:

Through our analysis, we gain the following insights into the voting behavior of different social strata and the underlying reasons behind their choice of political parties in elections.  First of all, the counties supporting the Democratic Party and the Republican Party show obvious economic characteristics, and there is a gap in economic level between them.  The states leaning the Democratic Party tend to have higher GDP, which may be caused by the economic development and industrial structure of different regions.  At the same time, high-cost areas tend to be more Democratic, possibly because they attract more people with higher incomes, and Democratic policies are more in line with their real needs.

Of course, wealth may not be the deciding factor in people's choice of party.  The choice in the election also depends on various other factors, such as education level and local customs, and we can still observe the underlying mechanism behind the election choice through more factors.  In any case, an understanding of these is crucial for political analysts to understand the importance of socioeconomic factors in shaping political preferences.  Our discussion of the differences between Democrats and Republicans can also give voters a better idea of the character of the party they support in the election.

As we move forward, we made our code public to support future researchers, you can find it in the code part in the website to download, hoping that our project will provide additional insights to people who have questions about voting mechanisms and the Democratic-Republican character.  By understanding the relationship between social factors and party preferences, the hope is that one day people will live in a more diverse and liberal society!