2016 was an eventful year. The narrow votes in favour of Brexit in the UK and Trump in the US were a shock to many. You’ve probably heard commentators remark on the underlying causes for why people voted as they did. A familiar caricature is of blue collar disaffection (Leave and Trump) versus liberal, metropolitan values and relative affluence (Remain and Clinton). But is this true of the entirety of the UK and US?
The CDRC is pleased to launch a new training short course at Leeds this year, “Explaining Brexit and Trump with Tidy data graphics”, to tantalise the analytical imaginations of researchers interested in using data to examine the influences on human decision-making within the social sciences. Taking place on the 2nd May, this course will be delivered by Dr Roger Beecham, who will lead an exploration of the story told by the data behind the EU referendum vote and American presidential election. You’ll learn how to develop a family of data graphics (in R), each of which will reveal a bit more of the data puzzle behind the UK referendum and US election results.
A lot of theories have been ventured in popular media as to why both votes went the way they did – some ‘clickbait’, others more intriguing – but in this 1 day course you’ll have the opportunity to explore the hard data behind the votes; to look at these data in the specific contexts of socio-demographic variables; and to evaluate area-level variation in the votes. It is a course designed to elucidate and lead you toward more data-grounded answers to the questions of what happened in 2016 and why people voted the way they did.
In addition to understanding a little more about the political phenomena, you will:
- learn how to data wrangle, reshape and curate Tidy data in R
- appreciate some key principles of good data visualization design
- confidently generate data graphics using a consistent vocabulary (ggplot2)
- develop an intuitive understanding of statistical modelling procedures
Sound like fun? You can find out more and book on the course here.
Want to take part in a Data Challenge on the subject of Brexit? The CDRC is currently challenging those planning to attend the GISRUK 2018 conference to use CDRC datasets to submit responses to the theory launched in The Economist article, “The immigration paradox Explaining the Brexit vote” – find out more here.