Political commentators routinely treat rural America as an undifferentiated bastion of strength for Republicans. In fact, rural America is a deceptively simple term describing a remarkably diverse collection of places encompassing nearly 75 percent of the U.S. land area and 50 million people. Voting trends in this vast area are far from…

Religious group size, demographic composition, and the dynamics thereof are of interest in many areas of social science including migration, social cohesion, parties and voting, and violent conflict. Existing estimates however are of varying and perhaps poor quality because many countries do not collect official data on religious identity. We…

A new analysis of party identification, based on more than 10,000 interviews of registered voters conducted by Pew Research Center in 2017, finds that 37% of registered voters identify as independents, 33% are Democrats, and 26% are Republicans. For decades, women have been more likely than men to identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. But…

Demography is the study of human population statistics. The United States Census Bureau has measured the demographics of the U.S. population since 1790. Why? The main purpose was for division of representatives of the people in government and for taxes. As time has gone on, it gives us a better picture of who we are as a nation and how to better…

With the 2016 presidential election right around the corner, geography provides a dynamic view of the spatial patterns and processes that shape the electorate. The major presidential campaigns know that a winning strategy must use geography to make informed decisions about where to allocate limited resources such as money and staff. In the end,…

Despite recent and growing interest in using Twitter to examine human behavior and attitudes, there is still significant room for growth regarding the ability to leverage Twitter data for social science research. In particular, gleaning demographic information about Twitter users--a key component of much social science research--remains a…