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TL;DR

This is about the 2016 Presidential Election. Start here.

Why is this here?

Everyone I know has had feelings about What Happened in 2016, but most of them have different answers and few have much evidence. Some claim Berniebros torpedoed Hillary’s campaign, some blame low turnout among minority voters, some some blame the candidate and some blame the zeitgeist.

But we can do better than that. We can, and should, produce analysis that is clear, accessible, and informative, so we can know our past and learn for the future. This isn’t a partisan activity: it is in everyone’s interest to have a reality-based worldview. This site is some of my work on these questions. Hopefully, the charts here will be the start of good discussions rather than the end of bad ones.

Sources

Voting Data

From here. Author cites Townhall and The Guardian, and spot checks look right.

Education Data

From here, specifically this file . I deleted the top 4 rows of metadata to get a rectangular table of data and headers.

Unemployment Data

From here, specifically this file . I deleted the top 7 rows of metadata to get a rectangular table of data and headers.

Demographic Data

From here. Its the ACS 5 year in 2015.

Drug Overdose Data

Pick the right years here. Use these codes.