Since about the time the previous President was elected, my interest in politics-- especially elections and voting --has ramped up to where it is now. I annoy everyone I know, as this is one of the only topics about which I will talk at length, and I deeply care about it.
I was unemployed for most of 2023. I am a system administrator and programmer with a focus on sifting through mountains of data to find messages. But as I was unemployed(after quitting a job that didn't flex that programming muscle in the slightest) I decided after a couple months that I needed a project to keep myself sharp while I was applying and interviewing for jobs. I popped up a linode VPS, created some DNS entries, configured some software, and assembled some census data and some political data. Late last summer, the first form of psephology.org was born. I've added a number of features since then, but the goal the whole time has been to simplify and contextualize some dry, raw data that most people dismiss as dry and raw, because as boring and more importantly disparate the data is, it's exceptionally important.
Here are just a few pages that you might find interesting.
https://psephology.org/d/MO05 - KCMO's district(Emmanuel Cleaver)
https://psephology.org/d/KS03 - Johnson, Wyandotte, and much of the surrounding area(Sharice Davids)
https://psephology.org/d/CO01 - My district(Diana DeGette)
https://psephology.org/es/MO/Hawley - Analysis(FEC and polling data) for Missouri's Senate election later this year
https://psephology.org/c/PS75 - Evidence that Florida and Arizona dominate the elderly constituencies, which overwhelmingly lean red
https://psephology.org/c/PS25 - Evidence that districts with young people overwhelmingly vote for Democrats
I've also made a companion substack for the site, where I have been posting some analysis but mostly news of site feature additions. Though as the primaries approach with the first being on March 5(I am not counting the nonsense Presidential primaries), I plan on writing more about individual races.
I say all this for two reasons: 1) I would love feedback from you about it, and 2) If you find it useful, I would love if you shared it with friends. This is not a profit vector for me. There is no advertisement, no tracking, no cookies, no signup, and no membership. I pay for it all out of my own pocket, and develop and maintain it on my own time. I just think that this level of detail is valuable for my own analysis purposes, and I think that if this benefits anyone else, then the work I've put into it will be worth it.
Thanks, and I hope to hear from you.