Calling all political numbers junkies: King County is publishing its election canvass data electronically. Here is 2003, here is 2004.
For those who aren't hip to the ways of election reporting, the canvass is a precinct-by-precinct breakdown of the vote for each election. Each report includes an index of which precints are in which legislative, council or congressional districts, making it very easy for potential candidates to find precincts they can expect to run well in, ones they will lose, and ones are a toss-up. Until 2002 King County only published this info on cdrom at a cost of $75 per election, which meant in practice only large organizations (read: political parties, unions and business associations) could afford enough data to track long term trends. With web availability, a high school student with mad Access skillz can set up an analysis.
No word yet on whether the county will back-publish older elections.
Posted by awm at May 19, 2004 08:56 AM