Electoral and Voting Systems Analysis
8 weeks · 0 milestones
Conduct a real electoral data analysis using publicly available official election data from a named electoral authority. Analyse a specific named election or electoral system and draw a concrete, evidence-based conclusion about voting behaviour or system effects. Document your methodology and data sources. Proof is the analysis plus a Q&A with a political scientist or quantitative analyst who challenges your interpretation — specifically, what alternative explanations exist for the patterns you found. Your written response is a required part of the proof.
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3 milestones
Obtain a real electoral dataset from a public elections commission, an academic data repository (Harvard Dataverse, ICPSR), or a government open-data portal. Describe the dataset: what elections are covered, what the key variables are, what the unit of analysis is (constituency, party, candidate, election), data quality issues (missing values, rounding), and what research questions can be addressed with it. Produce descriptive statistics: vote shares by party across time or geography, turnout patterns, and at least one geographic or temporal comparison.
Proof required
Data description document (500+ words) with the dataset source and access method, key variables with definitions, data quality notes, descriptive statistics covering vote shares and turnout, and at least one comparison across time or geography supported by tables or charts.
What gets checked
- Dataset is from a real public source with an accessible link or repository citation
- Data quality issues are documented — missing data, definitional changes across time, or rounding are addressed
- At least one geographic or temporal comparison is supported by specific numbers, not just described