results don't match Guardian file
ConnorDonegan opened this issue · comments
I downloaded 2012 results from the Guardian here
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/07/us-2012-election-county-results-download
and used read.table() to bring your updated results into R. From the Guardian table, I'm just taking their summary results rather than the raw vote counts.
It looks like they don't quite match up:
| GEOID | Romney-pct-Guardian | Romney-pct-Tonmcg | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10001 | 46.8 | 49.81482 | -3.0148223 |
| 10003 | 32.2 | 32.70266 | -0.5026634 |
| 10005 | 55.9 | 59.16703 | -3.2670289 |
| 15003 | 29.8 | 31.60706 | -1.8070610 |
The average difference is -3.
You're comparing two different concepts. The Guardian percentages are the two major-party candidate's share of the total vote. The percentages in the csv file report the two major-party candidate's share of the total major-party vote.
The Guardian says Romney received 46.8% of the total vote for GEOID 10001, including third party, write-ins, etc. The csv file says Romney received 49.8% of the total Republican-Democratic vote only for the same county.