New Jersey 1824 Sheriff, Middlesex County

I chose the dataset “New Jersey 1824 Sheriff, Middlesex County”, a dataset that shows the votes for choosing who the sheriff of Middlesex County will be for 1824, because it closely relates to me as I also live within Middlesex County. The dataset was collected by Philip J. Lampi, an influential historian who was known for organizing past records of votes. Using this data, it would be near impossible to figure out the demographics of those who voted but due to the time period, it would be safe to assume that the majority of those who voted were white males. You would not be able to tell who was the previous sheriff as well with this data. In certain areas, it can be seen that those areas largely prefer one candidate over the others. For example, Woodbridge seems to largely favor J. Coddington over the other 3 candidates. We can make a guess that J. Coddington could have been born or reside within this town as many supporters usually come from hometown areas. Some questions to explore are why might certain areas like a certain candidate over another. But to figure this question out, this dataset would need a list of each candidate’s achievements as well as race, place of birth and other factors that may affect a candidate’s likability. With this dataset, we can ask which towns have more impact (votes) than others by adding up the total votes each town gave and compare the number of votes with other towns.