Analyzing a community
- Democracy Labs |
- 26 steps |
- 4 minutes
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Organizers often struggle to choose the best areas to canvass resulting in wasted time, effort and money. It is more productive to geotarget the areas with the most people with your desired demographics. Businesses use data and mapping to pick the best locations for their stores. The same technology works just as well for community organizing and political campaigns. Learn more at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
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In this project we want to see where they are people living below the poverty line, who do not have health insurance and do not normally vote in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. This information is used to focus canvassing efforts and encourage people to vote in order to improve their lives.
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Enter the city, county or town you are interested in. The map automatically zooms into the chosen area.
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Choose Smart Map which lets you add up to five layers of demographic information at a time. This could include things such as age, income, gender, health insurance, family size, race, how often they vote... The solution has over 200 characteristics to choose from along with the data needed.
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Adjust the sliding scales to narrow your selection. For instance, moving the slider for income to the left only shows areas on the map where residents meet that criteria and make less than the income you have chosen. The map updates immediately on the screen so you know which areas best meet your selection.
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Click "Browse All Variables" to choose your selection criteria. You can choose up to five layers to overlay on a map at a time from a catalog of over 200 variables. This also includes political leaning and how often they vote in state and local elections. The information is aggregated. It does NOT include details on any individual or family.
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Let's start with income.
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Click "Apply" to show the level of income on the map. Notice that there are other selections that we did not use such as level of Food Stamp usage, household income and net worth.
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Click "OK" and adjust the sliders to show the income range you are interested in. The sliders adjust the upper and lower values that you are interested in. This lets you narrow your selection very precisely.
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Click here. Notice how the green area on the map has shrunk to filter out any households that make over $23,771.
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Adjust the Zoom level to show results by state, congressional district, county, zip cod, census tract or block group.
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Hovering your mouse over an area reveals the basic statistics for that area. In this case the map shows that the median household income for the chosen block is $53,368.
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Click "Add variables" to add more information to filter your selection with.
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Let's add another filter to see households in which areas do not have health insurance. The information shows the information in the aggregates, and does NOT reveal personal information about the people living there without health insurance. The data displayed is updated regularly by esri.
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Click "Health Insurance Coverage"
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Click here. Notice that we could also choose Disability Status as another variable in addition to Health Insurance Coverage if we wanted to.
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Click "2019 Pop 19-34: No Health Insurance Coverage (ACS 5-Yr)". Note that the system has further details such as health insurance coverage by a person's age, whether they get Medicare or Medicaid, get military care and how they purchase their insurance coverage.
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Choose whether to map the total number of people or the percentage of residents in an area.
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Click "Add variables". Now we have two variables mapped - Median Household Income and those without health insurance. Each variable can be individually adjusted.
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Click here. Next we want to see which families do not regularly vote in elections.
