Democracy’s Data: Analytics and Insights into American Elections

Course Number: 84-655

The point of this course is to understand the political world — particularly through the data it produces. American elections generate an enormous amount of it: vote returns reaching back to the nineteenth century, the census that decides how many seats each state gets, campaign finance filings, polls, roll-call votes, and the record of who turned out and who did not. Every one of those numbers was produced by somebody, for a purpose, and every one of them leaves something out.

We work with real data every week — 41 presidential elections since 1864, the apportionment that followed the 2020 census, FEC filings, congressional roll calls, Census and American Community Survey estimates, and the 2026 midterms as they happen.

This is a general education course and there is no coding prerequisite. Every data exercise we do arrives as a prepared data brief with the results already in front of you. What you are asked to do is read it closely, follow how the numbers were made, and explain what you are looking at. The skill being built is not programming; it is judgment about evidence. You will practice it on a data-driven news story written for real readers, and defend it in class every week.

Academic Year: 2026-2027
Semester(s): Fall
Units: 12
Prerequisite(s): 36-200
Location(s): Pittsburgh