Description: Charted Territory is starting a new series called “Illuminating America” that focuses on county-level data stories and the 2016 election. We kick the series off looking at Chlamydia as a predictor for the 2016 presidential election. Each “Illuminating America” variable, starting with Chlamydia, will be ranked in descending order in terms of ability to predict the county-level election results.
Chart: Chlamydia (x-axis) plotted against Trump vote for the 2016 election. Each bubble is an individual county. All counties above 50% on the y-axis voted for Trump, counties below voted for Clinton. Bubble area is proportional to county population. Bubble color depicts whether the county is in a Red or Blue state.
Observation: With an r-squared value of 0.348, 59% of the county-level results can be explained by the county Chlamydia rate. Specifically, increasing county-level chlamydia rates are correlated with decreasing Trump vote.
1Rank of each variable; 2Variable name; 3Percentage of counties that have data coverage; 4Regression type (linear; exponential; or power); 5Data weighted by county population; 6Correlation between variable and Trump vote; 7R-squared value; 8Percent of county-level results correctly predicted (value outside parentheses is the average success of predicting Republican and Democrat counties separately).
Methods and data: County-level chlamydia rates are taken from the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps1. County-level 2016 election results were compiled by Charted Territory by visiting each state’s Secretary of State web page. The data were compiled and visualized using Microsoft Excel2.
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