I received my voter’s pamphlet in the mail yesterday, and it inspired me to create a data visualization on voting. If you start to type, “Voting is a…” on Google, the autocomplete offers “right,” “privilege,” “civic duty,” and “waste of time.” When I 18, my perspective was the latter. I was apathetic; what is the point of voting if elections are never won by a single vote? Then my dad talked some sense into me (turns out dads can be right about some things). Voting is each of the first three autocompletes. I still hold the opinion that my single vote will not affect the outcome of an election, but I also believe in voicing my views and leading by example. Voting gives me the opportunity to express my wishes for how we ought to be governed. If everyone held that attitude, then the officials we elect will actually reflect the desires of the citizens, and that’s the purpose of our democracy. So get out there and vote in the 2014 Midterm Election!

This map shows voter turnout by county for the 2012 Presidential Election. I’ve calculated the percentage of voters out of the voting-age population. Other analyses on this topic sometimes use voter-eligible population (removing non-citizens, those in prison, etc.) This would shift some of the county percentages up a few points, but the map trends would not change.

I’ve used a diverging color scheme centered on the median to show which counties have higher than typical voter turnout, and which have lower. What’s interesting here is that the balance doesn’t follow population density or political affiliation. Some places are simply more politically active than others.

Data sources:

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1qcQLqrAIAe3RcEfdWSm_QcXMLmteVg4uSpSs1rM#rows:id=1

http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml (5-yr ACS 2012 - Table S0101)