Blog post #1: Dataset Analysis
I chose the dataset “A New Nation Votes,” because of the meaningfulness and relevance it has in the way election are held and the results that follow. Just by looking at the dataset of a specific state such as New Jersey, you can understand the type of individuals that the society sway towards and vote for and how overtime the pattern has changed from the years of 1787-1825. Patterns such as the early year electing more Federalists and how over time people elected more Republicans. The dataset was collected by Philip J. Lampi, who for the past 50 years had collected election results and compiled it into this one database. His purpose or reason for creating it was because of the lack of any organized election data, especially the early periods of keeping records, where the importance was never considered. Some limitations of the dataset could be the lack of knowledge of the time, as the viewer of the data we never know what the circumstances of the time were and how that inherently affects the understanding of the data. What if the election of that certain individuals was because of specific reason in which we would never know of. Some areas that could possibly be explored is the understanding of what caused change in power for political groups and that how the viewpoint of individuals inherently affected those change in power. Lastly, when faced with an about this certain dataset, I would demonstrate the importance of the data and how as the change in viewpoints of a society occurs regularly.
