Wisconsin 2023 State Supreme Court Election results aggregated to CONG, SLDL and SLDU levels

## Redistricting Data Hub (RDH) Retrieval Date
12/12/2023

## Sources
The RDH retrieved 2023 State Supreme Court reporting unit level election results from the Wisconsin Election Commission (https://elections.wi.gov/elections/election-results) 
2023 ward boundaries were retrieved from the Wisconsin Election Commission upon request. Please see "Additional Notes" below for more information on this unofficial file.

## Fields
Field                   Description

*all files*
tot_votes               total votes for unit geography
Janet C. Protasiewicz   total votes assigned to Janet C. Protasiewicz per unit geography
Daniel  Kelly           total votes assigned to Daniel  Kelly per unit geography
SCATTERING              write in candidate votes

*congressional file*
CON2021                 2021 congressional district
*SLDL file*
ASM2021                 2021 state assembly district
*SLDU file*
SEN2021                 2021 state senate district


## Processing Steps
The RDH aggregated the above and below mentioned ward boundary shapefile to the reporting unit level. This ward shapefile also had assignments for congressional and state legislative districts from the 2021 boundaries. The reporting unit identifiers were used to join to the 2023 State Supreme Court Election results at the Reporting Unit level, then the district assignments were used to aggregate to the congressional and state legislative levels.

## Additional Notes

On wards/reporting units:
Wisconsin reports votes at the "Reporting Unit" level. Reporting Units are made up of collections of redistricting wards. From the Wisconsin Election commission website, "Wards are the building blocks from which congressional, state senate, assembly, county supervisory and aldermanic districts are created. All territory, even if unpopulated, must be contained in a ward... Election results are reported by “reporting units.” A reporting unit may be one ward or a group of wards combined by resolution of the governing body" (https://elections.wi.gov/wards-districts-and-reporting-units)

On ward boundaries:
Wisconsin releases official ward boundary files in July and January of every year to reflect all updates and ordinances that have occurred since the prior release. As a result, the ward boundaries in the official files do not necessarily reflect the boundaries that were in place for any given election. 


Wisconsin's official January 2023 file is available from the [LTSBE](https://data-ltsb.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/LTSB), and ward boundary changes are tracked by the Municipal Boundary Review team on the state's [ordinances page](https://mds.wi.gov/View/Ordinances). Because of the boundary changes that occurred between January 2023 and April 2023, the RDH requested a file that would more accurately reflect the boundaries that were in place at the time of the election from the Wisconsin Election Commission. The Wisconsin Election Commission provided an *unofficial* file reflecting the boundaries in place in March of 2023. 

When comparing aggregated wards from the ward boundary file to the ward aggregates listed as reporting units from the election result files there was almost a complete match. Of note, The City of Madison Ward #156 in Dane County had results - 4 votes for Janet C. Protasiewicz in the election results, but no corresponding ward in the ward boundary file. Based on the [Ordinances page](https://mds.wi.gov/View/Ordinances) the RDH assigned this ward with the Town of Cottage Grove in Dane County as a best guess match. 

For questions about this dataset please contact info@redistrictingdatahub.org