Overview

1
Choosing a President
Tory Lightfoot
Teachers Guide
Overview In this activity, students will use
ArcView 3.X to examine the presidential election
process in the United States. Students will use
historic election data to create maps that
display voting patterns by state. The historic
elections that students will examine were very
close elections and students will learn about the
electoral system and discover how it is possible
for a presidential candidate to win the election,
but lose the popular vote. Finally, students will
make predictions for the upcoming election
(2004). Grade Level This activity is appropriate
for grades 9 12. Time Requirement This exercise
can be completed in three to five 45 minute class
periods. Materials/Resources This activity
requires ArcView GIS and Excel. Technology
Skill Level This activity requires an
intermediate level ability using ArcView and some
knowledge of spreadsheets and table creation.
Atlas of US Presidential Elections http//uselect
ionatlas.org "Does my vote count? Teaching the
electoral college" by David Walbert, available
on LEARN NC at http//www.learnnc.org. Federal
Election Commission Electoral College www.fec.gov
/pages/ecmenu2.htm Harvard University, Kennedy
School of Government http//www.ksgcase.harvard.ed
u/ Washington County BOE Secondary Social
Studies http//www.alt.wcboe.k12.md.us/mainfold/cu
rric/secsoc/lessons.htm
2
Teachers Guide (cont.)
National Geography Standards
PASS Objectives Physical Science Process
Standard 2 Classify 4.1-4 Interpret and
Communicate Geography Process Standards 1, 2,
16, 17
Suggestions for Teachers Creating a Project in
ArcView The election data is available online but
must be entered into an Excel spreadsheet format.
The tables can then be saved in a .dbf format,
then imported into an ArcView project. Once
added to the ArcView project, the tables can be
joined to the ESRI States theme attribute table
based on the state names. This will allow you to
classify the themes based on whether the state
voted Democratic or Republican.
3
Choosing a President
In this exercise, you will use ArcView to examine
three close U.S. presidential elections from the
past Then you will make a prediction for how the
upcoming 2004 election will turn out.
The Voting Process The actual mechanism of
electing the president and the vice president of
the United States is a rather complicated
process. The electoral college is one of the many
compromises written into the United States
Constitution in 1787. The founding fathers
devised the electoral college to elect the
president but they did not anticipate the
emergence of national political parties or a
communications network able to bring presidential
candidates before the entire electorate.
Under the Constitution, each state is authorized
to choose electors for president and vice
president, the number always being the same as
the combined number of U.S. senators and
representatives allotted to that state. With 100
senators and 435 representatives in the United
States, plus three electors for the District of
Columbia provided by the Twenty-third Amendment,
the total electoral college vote is 538.
Today, electors are chosen by direct popular vote
in every state. When voters vote for president,
they are actually voting for the electors pledged
to their presidential candidate.
To be elected to the presidency a candidate must
receive an absolute majority (270) of the
electoral votes cast.
The electoral college mechanism has been
criticized over the years. The basic objection is
that the system clearly has the potential to go
against the popular will in the selection of a
president. Because of the aggregation of
electoral votes by state, it is possible that a
candidate might win the most popular votes but
lose in the electoral college voting. This
happened in 1824 (when the election was thrown
into the House), in 1876 (when there were
disputed electors from several states), and in
1888. The winner-take-all system literally
means that the candidate team that wins most of
the popular votes in a particular state gets all
of the electoral votes in that state, and the
loser gets none, even if the loss is by a slim
popular-vote margin. Thus a candidate who fails
to carry a particular state receives not a single
electoral vote in that state for the popular
votes received. Since presidential elections are
won by electoral-not popular-votes, it is the
electoral vote tally that election-night viewers
watch for and that tells the tale.
4
Choosing a President
Step 1 Create a new project in ArcView
To begin, open ArcView GIS 3.3 by selecting the
icon on your desktop. You want to create a new
project with a new view. Click OK.
ArcView will ask if you want to add data to your
view. Since you will be adding data (tables and
a states shapefile), you should choose Yes.
Navigate to the following directory to add the a
states theme to your project. C\esri\Projects\E
lection\states.shp
It is a good idea to save your new project now
before we go any further.
Under the File drop down menu, choose Save
Project, then save your project in the following
directory C\esri\Projects\Election\name
Where name is your last name or your initials.
You will be saving to this directory throughout
this project, so remember which machine you are
using and your project directory path.
5
Step 2 Add election data to your project
Next, you will add several tables to your
project. These tables contain election data from
the presidential elections of 1876, 1960 and
2000. You will also be adding a table that you
will be using later, when you will be making
predictions about the upcoming 2004
election. From the project window, click on
Tables in the table of contents. Then click on
Add.
Navigate to the following directory
C\esri\Projects\Election\Tables And add the
following tables
(Note you can hold down the shift key and choose
all 4 tables at once.)
1876_vote.dbf 1960_vote.dbf 2000_vote.dbf 2004_ele
ction.dbf
When you have selected the four tables, click on
OK. The tables will be added to your project.
Take a moment to look at a couple of the tables.
6
Step 3 Make copies of the States theme
You will now create a separate theme for each of
the historical elections of 1876, 1960 and 2000.
First, we will need to make some copies of the
States.shp theme. To do this, make the
states.shp theme the active theme, then go to
Edit and choose Copy theme. Then choose
Edit and Paste. Continue to click on
Edit\Paste until your view has a total of 4
copies of the States.shp theme.
Now, lets rename each theme one for each
election year that we will be studying. To
change a themes name, go to Theme Properties and
change the name in the box called Theme
Name. Label your themes 1876 Election, 1960
Election, 2000 Election and 2004 Election.
Your view should now look like this
Step 4 Join tables
We will be joining the 1876 data table to the
1876 attribute table, so we can display and
analyze the 1876 election data. Open the
attribute table for the 1876 Election theme by
making the theme active, and then double clicking
on the Open theme table button. Now, go to your
project window and open the 1876_vote.dbf table.
Make both tables small enough so that you can see
them both on your screen at the same time.
7
When you join two tables in ArcView, you need to
join them based on a common field. You will be
joining these two tables on their common state
name field. To do this, highlight the State
field in the1876_vote table then highlight the
State_name field in the Attributes of
States.shp table. It is important that the
Attributes of States.shp table is the highlighted
(or active) table.
Attributes of 1876 Election is the highlighted
table.
The state name fields are both highlighted.
Now you are ready to join these two tables
together. Click on the Join tables
button. Examine the Attributed of States table
now. You should see additional fields that have
now been added to this table. Look for fields
named Elect_rep and Elect_dem. .
8
Step 5 Display 1876 Data
Now we will look at the election of 1876. This
election was between Samuel J. Tilden (the
Democratic candidate) and Rutherford B. Hayes
(the Republican candidate). Double click on the
1876 Election theme to bring up the Legend
Editor. Under Legend Type choose Unique
Value and choose Elect_vote as the Values
Field. Traditionally, Democratic states are
represented using red, and Republican states are
represented with blue. Change the colors for
Dem (Democratic) to red. Change the color for
Rep (Republican) to blue. Then click on Apply.
Your view should look like this.
9
Step 6 Analyze 1876 Data

• Questions
• Why are there gaps in the U.S. state map? What
  happened to Alaska and Hawaii?
• How many states voted in this election?

Now open the Attributes of 1876 Election table.
Highlight the Elect_rep field. Then click on
Field and then on Statistics.
This brings up a box of statistics for the field
that you highlighted, including the sum of all
values in a field. Use this statistics feature
to answer the following questions about the 1876
election.

• Questions
• How many electoral votes went to the Republican
  party in this election?
• How many electoral votes went to the Democratic
  party?
• How many popular votes did Hayes (Republican)
  receive?
• How many popular votes did Tilden receive (the
  Democratic candidate)?
• Who won the election going by electoral votes?
• Who received more popular votes?

10
Step 7 Analyze the 1960 Election.
The election of 1960 between Richard Nixon and
John F. Kennedy was very close. Some say that
public opinion was swayed toward Kennedy
following the televised debate between the two
candidates. Kennedy appeared handsome and
pulled-together on screen, while Nixon seemed
unattractive and sweaty! This historic debate
illustrated the huge importance of television and
appearance in deciding an election. You will now
repeat the procedures that you followed when you
analyzed the 1876 election. You will be given
the basic steps to follow, but will have to
figure out how to perform the necessary
operations in ArcView. If you need help, look
back over the steps you followed for the 1876
election. Steps to follow a. Join the
1960_vote.dbf table to the Attributes of 1960
Election table. b. Classify the 1960
Election theme on the Elect_vote field, and
change the colors used to red and blue. c.
Answer questions using the Field/Statistics
feature.

• Questions
• How many electoral votes did Kennedy (Democratic)
  receive?
• How many electoral votes did Nixon (Republican)
  receive?
• How many popular votes did Kennedy receive?
• How many popular votes did Nixon receive?
• Who won this election?

11
Step 8 Analyze the 2000 Election.
The election of 2000 was very close and turned
out to be quite controversial. The election was
between George W. Bush (Republican) and Al Gore
(Democratic). You will again repeat the
procedures that you followed when you analyzed
the 1876 election. You will be given the basic
steps to follow, but will have to figure out how
to perform the necessary operations in ArcView.
If you need help, look back over the steps you
followed for the 1876 election. Steps to
follow a. Join the 2000_vote.dbf table to the
Attributes of 2000 Election table. b.
Classify the 2000 Election theme on the
Elect_vote field, and change the colors used
to red and blue. c. Answer questions using the
Field/Statistics feature.

• Questions
• How many electoral votes did Al Gore (Democratic)
  receive?
• How many electoral votes did Bush (Republican)
  receive?
• How many popular votes did Gore receive?
• How many popular votes did Bush receive?
• Who won this election?
• Why was this election controversial?

12
Step 9 Make predictions for the upcoming 2004
election.
Now that you have analyzed three elections from
the past you will make your own prediction about
the upcoming election. In order to make your
prediction, you will need to decide how each
state will vote whether the electoral votes for
each state will go to the Democratic or to the
Republican party. While this task might seem to
be impossible, you can make a smart and informed
prediction, if you consider certain factors.

• Guidelines for predicting election results
• Look at election results from the past,
  especially the 2000 election.
• Understand the typical voting patterns of states.
• Understand the importance of the swing states
  (see handout).
• Consider current polls, expert opinions, and look
  at where the candidates are campaigning.
• Consider the major issues in the upcoming
  campaign.

Your task is to create a map layout of your 2004
Election Prediction. To do this, you will need
to fill out the table called 2004_election.dbf.
First, open the table and notice that it contains
the following fields State_name, 2000_elect,
2004_elect, Party, Dem_elect and Rep_elect. This
is the table where you will be entering your
election predictions. To do this, you will need
to make the table editable as follows Go to
Table on the menu bar and choose Start
Editing. Then click on the edit tool. This
will allow you to fill in values in your table
fields. You will be deciding which party will
carry the vote for each state and entering either
Dem or Rep in the Party field. Then, you will
enter the number of electoral votes in the in the
appropriate column.
13
When you are finished entering your predictions,
you will choose Table and Stop editing and
will save your changes. Now you can create a map
of your predictions. To do this, you will need to
join the 2004_election.dbf table that you just
edited, with the 2004_prediction.dbf table that
you set up at the beginning of this project. Then
you will follow the same procedure as before in
order to create a map of your predictions. Once
you have created a map, you will create a layout
to hand in. Your layout should include the
following elements - an appropriate title -
your name - the date that you created the
layout - a legend, north arrow and scale
bar Nnte since you will be printing in black and
white, you might want to choose colors other than
the traditional red and blue, in order for the
results to print clearly (try gray and white,
for example). Also, answer the following
questions 20. What is your opinion of the
electoral college system? 21. How does the
electoral college system affect the value of a
single vote? 22. How would an election based on
a popular vote create challenges for pollsters
and political analysts? 23. Write a paragraph
explaining how you came up with your 2004
election predictions. What factors did you
consider? How many total electoral votes will
go to the Republican Party? How many total
electoral votes will go to the Democratic Party?
When the election is over in November, we will
see if anyones predictions were right, or who
came the closest.
14
Data Dictionary
Elect_vote -- the total number of electoral
votes for a state Elect_dem the number of
electoral votes given to the Democratic
party Elect_rep the number of electoral votes
given to the Republican party Total_vote the
total number of popular votes cast Pop_dem the
number of popular votes cast for the Democratic
party Pop_rep the number of popular votes cast
for the Republican party 2000_Elect the number
of electoral votes assigned to each state in the
2000 election 2004_Elect the number of
electoral votes assigned to each state in the
2004 election Party the winning party (or your
prediction) either Dem or Rep
15
Online Resources Atlas of US Presidential
Elections http//uselectionatlas.org "Does my
vote count? Teaching the electoral college" by
David Walbert, available on LEARN NC at
http//www.learnnc.org. Federal Election
Commission Electoral College www.fec.gov/pages/ec
menu2.htm Harvard University, Kennedy School of
Government http//www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/ Washin
gton County BOE Secondary Social
Studies http//www.alt.wcboe.k12.md.us/mainfold/cu
rric/secsoc/lessons.htm