index.qmd

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title: "Overview"
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This project explores using election results to gain insights into political spending. That analysis is in a different notebook and we only process results here.

We start with election results by Voting Tabulation Districts as provided by the Texas Legislative Council: [Comprehensive Election Datasets (Compressed Format)](https://data.capitol.texas.gov/dataset/comprehensive-election-datasets-compressed-format) | [Docs](https://data.capitol.texas.gov/dataset/vtds).

We've been looking at two different things

- To find the most competitive races ... to find the two candidates in each district that have the most votes, and then calculate a margin of victory.
- To find simply who won each race. This is problematic as unopposed candidates are not present.

The fields are as follows:

- year: Election year
- election: General, Democratic Primary, Republican Primary, as well was runoff and special elections
- district: State Rep district
- first_place: Last name of race winner
- first_place_party: Winner's party
- first_place_inc: `TRUE` if incumbent
- first_place_pct: Percentage of total vote
- second_place: Last name of runner up
- second_place_party: Runner up party
- second_place_inc: `TRUE` if incumbent
- second_place_pct: Percentage of total vote
- vote_margin: Difference in percentage of total vote
- runoff: T/F value if there was a runoff
- winner: Winner's last name, if no runoff.
- flg_5: `TRUE` if margin is 5% or less
- flg_10: `TRUE` if margin is 10% or less

## Contributors:

- Isabella Zeff, MIG data fellow 2024-2025
- Christian McDonald, Associate Professor of Practice