Lab 1 Instruction 0126
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PSC 302 Research Methods in Political Science
Lab 1
January 26, 2022
In Lab 1, you are going to learn some basic calculations and functions in Excel. HW 1
(5%) is a question that needs the combination of all the functions you will learn today. Imagine
you work for an NGO trying to enhance the civil society in Nevada, and you want to raise the
turnout rate for the upcoming presidential election.
As you have observed in Lab 0, turnout rate is not a constant across time and across
counties. In 2020, Humboldt had the highest turnout rate (88.75%) and Mineral had the lowest
(74.36%). Clearly, turnout rate is a “variable.” Political scientists are interested in variables and
try to “explain” the variation.
Step 1. / division and
drag (function copying)
In Lab 0, you created a dataset of the turnout rate of each county in 2020. You can find it
in the Lab 1 material folder in Webcampus. The dataset looks like this:
Turnout is costly. You may argue that the different turnout rate is due to how and when
people cast the ballot. Therefore, we explore how Nevada residents voted in 2020. We want to
know what percentage of voters in each county chose to vote on and before the Election Day.
Please create a new variable named “Election Day Turnout Percentage” on a new column
I, which is the number of ELECTION DAY TURNOUT divided by TOTAL TURNOUT. Click
cell I1 and type “Election Day Turnout Percentage.” It is a good habit to keep the variable names
on row 1. “/” means division. You can type “=D2/C2”, or you can use your mouse to choose the
two cells, then press enter to confirm. “=D2/C2” is a function in Excel. It tells Excel what to do.
“=” cannot be ignored, or Excel will consider it as a text, not a function.
You will get a number 0.097904285, which means that “
among all 252,563 people voted
in 2020 in Washoe county, 9.79% of them voted on the Election Day.
”
It is also possible that you get a 0. Don’t be panic! It is due to the format setting in Excel.
Excel thought either your C or D or I column as a “text”, not “number”, so it does not know how
to divide texts (sin(x)/n is not six, after all.).
To solve this bug, choose the Column I, C, and D
Format Cells
Set that cell as a
Number with decimal places 4
OK.
You will see 0.0979 in I2.
Then you wanted to apply the same function to all county, and…you do not need to type
18 times. All you need to do is to move your mouse to the black pot on right down corner of cell
I2, and your cursor will become a black cross, then you pull it all the way to I19. It means to
apply the same “function” to all cells of the same column, and Excel will replace other cells in
the function (D2 and C2) to other cells accordingly (D3 and C3, D4 and C4, D5 and C5….).
Magic!
After you applied the function to all cells in column I, column I is the new variable
representing the percentage of voters in each county who went to vote in 2020 chose to vote on
the Election Day.
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Step 2. Sorting
In which county were voters most likely to vote on the Election Day?
Even though you can find the max value directly by your bare eyes, direct observation
will be less and less efficient when the number of cases (rows) increased. Therefore, we use the
function “sorting” to help us sort the numbers from small to large, or from large to small.
Before we start,
please remember one important habit (as a data scientist): whenever
you are going to do something to the data structure, make a copy first.
It is very likely that
you cannot undo some steps after you sorted, filtered, or merged the datasets.
Please click the
at the bottom and create a new sheet. You can name the sheet “sort by
Eday %”. Then you can select the whole table in Sheet 1, and then copy-and-paste the table to
the Sheet 2.
We then select the whole table in Sheet 2 again, then choose Home
Sort & Filter
Custom Sort. Custom Sort will enable us to choose what variable we want to sort as the
reference. Please remember that
you must select the whole table
so that all variables will be
sorted by on the variable we planned.
We want to sort the whole table based on the value of turnout on the election day. In the
Sort window, we choose the “Election Day Turnout Percentage,” and choose the Order “Smallest
to Largest”
Then the whole table will look like this. Only 8.7% Carson City voters chose to vote on
the Election Day. But in Esmeralda, the percentage is 33.8%! The result you would see is shown
below.
Step 3. SUM summation
We also want to know what percentage of voters in each district chose NOT TO vote on
the election day. There are three other voting methods: early voting, absentee turnout, and mail
turnout. We need to sum up the three turnouts then divide it to the total turnout.
Go back to Sheet 1, we firstly create a variable titled “Non-election-day turnout
percentage.” Then you can either type in “=(E2+F2+G2)/C2”, or you can use the SUM function.
SUM is a function that sums up everything in the parenthesis together. E2:G2 means “Everything
from E2 to G2 in the Table.” Basically, “=(E2+F2+G2)/C2” and “=SUM(E2:G2)/C2” are the
same, but when the number of items/cells increases, you would rather use the SUM function.
You can then use drag to apply for function to all counties. To double-check that you are
on the right path, you can check if the summation of each row in column I and J is 100%. Voted
on the Election Day (Column I) + Voted not on the Election Day (Column J)= Everyone who
voted.
Step 4. Submit your HW1 (5%)
Dr. Wang wants to write a report comparing the turnout percentage between the counties
dominated by Democrats and Republicans, respectively. In 2020, there are two counties which
Biden got more votes:
Clark and Washoe, the two counties with the most registered voters
.
Trump won the majority of votes in all other small counties.
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Q1: The overall Turnout Percentage in Clark and Washoe combined. (1%)
Hint:
1.
Sort the whole table by registered voters (Column B). (Why?)
2.
Pick one empty cell and calculate:
= SUM(TOTAL TURNOUT of Clark and Washoe)
/
SUM(REGISTERED VOTERS of Clark and Washoe)
Q2: The overall Turnout Percentage in all other counties without Clark and Washoe. (1%)
Hint:
1.
Sort the whole table by registered voters (Column B).
2.
Pick one cell and calculate:
= SUM(TOTAL TURNOUT of all other counties)
/
SUM(REGISTERED VOTERS of all other counties)
Q3: Based on your calculation, do counties with more Biden votes have a higher overall
turnout? (1%)
Use your Rebelmail to submit your HW1 to
austin.wang@unlv.edu
and
coxj7@unlv.nevada.edu before 23:59 pm on Saturday (January 29).
Late submission will
cause -0.5%.
o
Mail subject: HW1 – [YOURNAME]
o
Answers to Q1, Q2, Q3
o
Attach the Excel file Nevada 2020 Turnout [YOURNAME]
.xlsx you are using for
HW 1, which should include the functions calculating the result of Q1 and Q2.
(2%)