This shapefile was processed by MGGG staff and members of the Voting Rights Data Institute. The Voting Rights Data Institute (VRDI) was a 2018 summer intensive sponsored by the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group (MGGG) at Tufts and MIT, with major support from a Bose Research Grant at MIT and from the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts.
The 2011 voting tabulation district (VTD) and 2010 census block shapefiles were obtained from the US Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line Shapefiles. Block level demographic data for the 2010 Decennial Census were retrieved using the Census API. Election data was compiled at the precinct level by a private individual.
Demographic data were aggregated from the census block level and precincts were assigned to districts using MGGG's proration software. Election data were also prorated onto VTDs from the original precinct shapefile using the maup package.
Below is a brief description of each of the listed variables in the attribute table of the VTD shapefile:
STATEFP10: State FIPS codeCOUNTYFP10: County FIPS codeVTDST10: Voting tabulation district FIPS codeGEOID10: VTD FIPS codeVTDI10: 2010 Census voting district indicatorNAME10: Voting tabulation district nameNAMELSAD10: Translated statistical area description codeLSAD10: 2010 Census legal/statistical area description code for voting districtMTFCC10: MAF/TIGER feature class codeFUNCSTAT10: 2010 Census functional statusALAND10: Area land (square meters)AWATER10: Area water (square meters)INTPTLAT10: Latitude of internal pointINTPTLONG10: Longitude of internal pointTOTPOP: Total population in 2010 CensusNH_WHITE: White, non-hispanic, population in 2010 CensusNH_BLACK: Black, non-hispanic, population in 2010 CensusNH_AMIN: American Indian and Alaska Native, non-hispanic, population in 2010 CensusNH_ASIAN: Asian, non-hispanic, population in 2010 CensusNH_NHPI: Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, non-hispanic, population in 2010 CensusNH_OTHER: Other race, non-hispanic, population in 2010 CensusNH_2MORE: Two or more races, non-hispanic, population in 2010 CensusHISP: Hispanic population in 2010 CensusH_WHITE: White, hispanic, population in 2010 CensusH_BLACK: Black, hispanic, population in 2010 CensusH_AMIN: American Indian and Alaska Native, hispanic, population in 2010 CensusH_ASIAN: Asian, hispanic, population in 2010 CensusH_NHPI: Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, hispanic, population in 2010 CensusH_OTHER: Other race, hispanic, population in 2010 CensusH_2MORE: Two or more races, hispanic, population in 2010 CensusVAP: Total voting age population in 2010 CensusHVAP: Hispanic voting age population in 2010 CensusWVAP: White, non-hispanic, voting age population in 2010 CensusBVAP: Black, non-hispanic, voting age population in 2010 CensusAMINVAP: American Indian and Alaska Native, non-hispanic, voting age population in 2010 CensusASIANVAP: Asian, non-hispanic, voting age population in 2010 CensusNHPIVAP: Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, non-hispanic, voting age population in 2010 CensusOTHERVAP: Other race, non-hispanic, voting age population in 2010 Census2MOREVAP: Two or more races, non-hispanic, voting age population in 2010 CensusATG12D: Number of votes for 2012 Democratic attorney general candidateATG12R: Number of votes for 2012 Republican attorney general candidateGOV14D: Number of votes for 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidateGOV14R: Number of votes for 2014 Republican gubernatorial candidateGOV10D: Number of votes for 2010 Democratic gubernatorial candidateGOV10R: Number of votes for 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidatePRES12D: Number of votes for 2012 Democratic presidential candidatePRES12O: Number of votes for 2012 other party's presidential candidatePRES12R: Number of votes for 2012 Republican presidential candidateSEN10D: Number of votes for 2010 Democratic senate candidateSEN10R: Number of votes for 2010 Republican senate candidateT16ATGD: Number of votes for 2016 Democratic attorney general candidateT16ATGR: Number of votes for 2016 Republican attorney general candidateT16PRESD: Number of votes for 2016 Democratic Presidential candidateT16PRESOTH: Number of votes for 2016 other party's presidential candidateT16PRESR: Number of votes for 2016 Republican presidential candidateT16SEND: Number of votes for 2016 Democratic senate candidateT16SENR: Number of votes for 2016 Republican senate candidateUSS12D: Number of votes for 2012 Democratic senate candidateUSS12R: Number of votes for 2012 Republican senate candidateREMEDIAL: Congressional district ID in 2018 enacted remedial planGOV: Congressional district ID in Governor’s counter-proposed planTS: Congressional district ID in Turzai-Scarnati PlanCD_2011: Congressional district ID in 2011 enacted congressional mapSEND: State Senate district IDHDIST: State House district ID538DEM: FiveThirtyEight Democratic favoring plan538GOP: FiveThirtyEight GOP favoring plan538CMPCT: FiveThirtyEight plan favoring compactness
The shapefile uses a UTM Zone 18N projection (EPSG: 26918).
We give this shapefile a C rating as election results were compiled by a private individual rather than by ourselves or the Secretary of State's offce. While election results were verified at the state and county levels, we acknowledge the possibility of error at the sub-county level.
VTDs in this shapefile come with district assignments for several plans relevant to the 2018 State Supreme Court case. It is important to note that because most of the plans were drawn using census blocks, there are places where the legal plans cut through the units of this shapefile. VTDs were assigned to the district that contains the majority of its area. In places this creates noncontiguous districts which can cause errors when trying to use the plan as an initial partition for GerryChain. We suggest using the function recursive_tree_part to create a seed plan as a starting point. If it is important to use one of the plans provided as a starting point for chain, adding edges on your dual graph between nodes (7648,7635) and (1247,1160) should fix connectivity problems for CD_2011 and GOV. The 538DEM and 538CMPCT plans have some VTDs that look to be incorrectly assigned in the shapefiles provided on FiveThirtyEight's Atlas of Redistricting repository. We have chosen to follow their assignments, but would suggest reassigning GEOID10 = '420033150' to district '12' to make the 538DEM plan contiguous and reassigning '42061430' to district '09' and '4210380' and '4210370' to district '17' to make the 538CMPCT plan contiguous. For more information, please refer to this GerryChain documentation.
2020 AND 2014 elections were added to this dataset as a new beta version shapefile in October 2021, compiled and processed by MGGG lab members. These elections were sourced from the the Pennsylvania Secertary of State Office and were joined to the pre-existing election results on 2020 vtd shapes. This file maintains the C rating due to the difficulties in the joining process. The file holds a 99.5% vote count accuracy. Due to size contraints this data is provided here as a csv that can be joined to the 2020 Pennsylvania VTD shapefiles.
Definitions for the columns novel to this version are listed below:
AG20D: Votes for Democratic Attorney General candidate 2020 (Josh Shapiro)AG20R: Votes for Republican Attorney General candidate 2020 (Heather Heidelbaugh)AUD20D: Votes for Democratic Auditor candidate 2020 (Nina Ahmad)AUD20R: Votes for Republican Auditor candidate 2020 (Timothy DeFoor)TRES20D: Votes for Democratic Treasurer candidate 2020 (Joe Torsella)TRES20R: Votes for Republican Treasurer candidate 2020 (Stacy Garrity)PRES20D: Votes for Democratic Presidential candidate 2020 (Joe Biden)PRES20R: Votes for Republican Presidential candidate 2020 (Donald Trump)GOV14D: Votes for Democratic Gubernatorial candidate 2014 (Tom Wolf)GOV14R: Votes for Republican Gubernatorial candidate 2014 (Tom Corbett)