2016 VA Primary Election Results ## RDH Date Retrieval 07/05/21 ## RDH Upload Date 07/14/2021 ## Sources The RDH retrieved the 2016 primary election results for Virginia from MEDSL - the MIT Election Data and Science Lab (https://electionlab.mit.edu/data). ## Fields **Fields:** **Descriptions:** 'precinct' precinct name/identifier 'office' office name 'district' string - The district identifier for the race, given that it is substate. If the district is a state legislative or U.S. House race, then the district is string padded to be 3 digits long and with zeroes, i.e. State Senate district 3 would be equal to "003". Other substate units (wards, seats, etc) with multiple level are included if given, i.e. State District Court of the Sixth district and seat C, would be "006, seat C". For candidates with state wide jurisdictions, district is "STATEWIDE". For races without district info, the field is left blank "". 'candidate' string - The candidate name. 'party_detailed' string - The party name for the given entry. Propositions, amendments, and other referenda are left as blank "". 'party_simplified' string - The party name for the given entry simplified to one of the following: DEMOCRAT, REPUBLICAN, LIBERTARIAN, OTHER, and NONPARTISAN. Propositions, amendments, and other referenda are left as blank "". 'mode' string - The voting mode for how the election results are reported. For results that do not offer disaggregation by mode, it will be "TOTAL". For other states that do offer the distinction, then some common entries might include: ABSENTEE, ELECTRONIC, ELECTION DAY, PROVISIONAL, ONE-STOP, etc. 'votes' int - The numeric value of votes for a given entry. 'county_name' string - The name of the county. 'county_fips' string - The Census 5-digit code for a given county. Structured such that the first two digits are the state fips, and the last three digits are the county part of the fips. Each component is string padded such that if a state's or county's fip is one digit, i.e. AL, then padded such that it might take the form of "01020". 'jurisdiction_name' string - The name for the jurisdiction. With the exception of New England states, Wisconsin, and Alaska, these will be the same as the county_name. For the New England states, these will be the town names. 'jurisdiction_fips' string - The fips code for the jurisdiction, which will be the same as the county fips for every state except New England states, Wisconsin, and Alaska. Just as with county fips, these varaibles are string padded, though the fips will be 10 digits. 'dataverse' string - The dataverse that the data will be apart of given its office. These take the form of "PRESIDENT" for US Presidential races, "SENATE" for US Senate races, "HOUSE" for US House races, "STATE" for state level executive, legislative, and judicial races. All other races are part of the "LOCAL" dataverse. 'year' int - The year of the election. 'stage' string - The stage of the election, can be "PRI" for primary, "GEN" for general, or "RUNOFF" for a runoff election. 'state' string - The name of the state. 'state_po' string - The state postal abbreviation. 'state_fips' int - The state's fips code, 2 digits. 'state_cen' int - The state's census code. 'state_ic' int - Alternative state identity code. 'special' boolean - An indicator for whether the election was a special election, "True" if special, "False" for non-special. 'writein' TRUE/FALSE indicator for write-in candidates/totals 'date' string - The date of the election, formatted as %y-%m-%d. 'readme_check' boolean - An indicator for whether an issue arose with the data, "True" if so, and "False" otherwise. ## Processing Steps The RDH used Python's Pandas library to separate MEDSL's election data files by state for 2016. For more information on MEDSL's data processing, see MEDSL's Github repository for 2016 primary returns. (https://github.com/MEDSL/primary-precinct-returns). ## Additional Notes Information from MEDSL's Github: Added 2020-03-08. On March 4th, 2016, after the 2016 US Presidential Primaries, precinct “301 - Waterview” was merged with precinct “302 - Churchview” (see note on https://www.vpap.org/elections/precinct/3202). In some sets of official results, “301 - Waterview” has been dropped from the official aggregate totals for the Virginia US Presidential Primary, leading to a small discrepancy in vote totals. For example: 301 - Waterview votes for 2016 Presidential Primaries included in these official results: https://historical.elections.virginia.gov/elections/search/year_from:2016/year_to:2016/stage:Primaries 301 - Waterview votes for 2016 Presidential Primaries NOT included in these official results: https://results.elections.virginia.gov/vaelections/2016%20March%20Democratic%20Presidential%20Primary/Site/Locality/MIDDLESEX%20COUNTY/President.html We have kept 301 - Waterview in our 2016 Presidential Primary data for the VA primaries. Please contact info@redistrictingdatahub.org for more information.