Today, I debugged my visualizations from last time and then began using pandas to get together some statistics surrounding voter engagement over time.
My goals at the outset were to collect a few key data points about how voter engagement evolved over time: - Did citizens who were active in earlier years keep up momentum or lose it? - How often does the reverse happen? Are citizens increasing their engagement over time? - In general, is engagement trending upward or downward each year? I used statistics about town meeting attendance as well as voter participation in a number of elections starting from 2012. First, I used some groupby functionality to dissect the sample based on how many town meetings were attended in 2017, 2018, and 2019. This way, I was able to glean what percentages of each subgroup kept up momentum (attended at least one meeting in 2017, and returned in the next two years), gained momentum (began attending in 2018 or 19), or lost momentum over time. I then repeated the same process to record participation in samples of 3 local or state elections from 2012 through 2019. Now, I have a function that aggregates engagement data given any three events (election or town meeting) and provides these statistics. I'm still trying to figure out one issue with standardizing this function, as the town meeting data and election participation data are stored in different ways. I've been busy with the college application process over the last few months, but I just wanted to update this blog on my progress with the civic engagement project! So far, I've continued exploring the database and started working on some bar graphs and charts using matplotlib to help bring the data to life visually. This includes data on how voter registration and engagement as calculated within the database corresponds to student status and precinct membership. I'm currently working on generating accurate and clear bar graphs for these data points as well as a line chart representing the progression of voter engagement for different subgroups over time. I hope to add other visualizations to the project depending on what other data I encounter!
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AuthorI'm a high school senior and programming enthusiast. Archives
March 2022
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