Okay, this post has been sitting in my drafts folder since November. Time to post or delete. Last summer (2016), the social studies department approached the math department about whether we wanted to do a project together surrounding the upcoming presidential election. I quickly answered 'Yes!', for the rest of the department before they could get a word in.
The history teachers designed the presidential voting ballot and included a couple of local issues as well. Before the election, the 8th grade history teacher spent time with the students researching where our political parties come from and what they stand for. Then came the election with all of it's unexpected national results.
The history teachers designed the presidential voting ballot and included a couple of local issues as well. Before the election, the 8th grade history teacher spent time with the students researching where our political parties come from and what they stand for. Then came the election with all of it's unexpected national results.
Here is the link to our school-wide presidential election results. Notice we had some 8th grade boys give some interesting responses to ethnicity, i.e. "attack helicopter". Note to self: don't leave that option as an open text response next time. There are several sheets with two-way tables breaking down the data based on: gender, ethnicity, and grade-level.
Then came my turn. With my 8th graders in Algebra 1, we delved into the results and tried to tell a story from the numbers. Just giving straight statistics isn't helpful or interesting. We want to talk about what was unexpected or what the differences between how the grades voted might mean about how students develop as people.
First, the rundown:
First, the rundown:
School Totals:
7% Jill Stein, Green Party
73% Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party
10% Donald Trump, Republican Party
10% Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party
Boulder County Totals: State of Colorado Totals:
Stein: 1.9% 1.3%
Clinton: 70.6% 47.2%
Trump: 21.9% 44.4%
Johnson: 4.2% 5.0%
We had some great conversations about these summary statistics. What can we tell about the population of students at our school compared to the county? Is our country representative of the State? Good stuff.
Here’s some of the more interesting results based on our class discussions of the school-wide election.
Presidential Results:
81% females voted for Clinton while 67% of males did. That means a girl in our school is 14% more likely to have voted for Clinton than a boy.
Though we did not have a large percentage of students voting for Trump, males were twice as likely to vote for Trump as females.
8th graders were much more likely to vote for Trump as any of the other grade levels.
8th graders had a lot more variation in who they voted for than the other grades. We thought this had to do with the opportunity in social studies to study the parties and decide who students felt more aligned with.
In terms of ethnicity, there were also some interesting results. Some of the results are thrown off based on the small numbers of certain types of minority students in our school. The Hispanic/Latino students in our school voted overwhelmingly for Clinton (9 out of 10). The largest showing for Trump came from our Asian students at 16% followed by our White students at 9%.
The Asian students in our school had the strongest showing for Trump
Sugar Tax Results:
One of the local issues here in Boulder, CO was a proposed tax on sugary drinks. When you divide the results by gender, the girls in our school voted in favor of the tax 60-40, while the boys voted almost the exact opposite. We had some great discussions about why this might happen. The class consensus was that this might be due to the underlying issue of body image in our culture. Girls feel much more pressured than boys to be thin. This directly relates to their eating choices.
When you look at how the grades voted on the sugar tax you get a slightly different story. The 6th and 7th graders voted yes on the sugar tax. 6th grade approved the tax by a 15% spread. The percentage of students in favor in 7th grade shrunk to 6%, while the 8th graders voted against the sugar tax by a 15% spread. We wondered whether this was the older students exerting more independence--i.e. I can make my own decisions, please don’t tell me what to eat or drink.
7% Jill Stein, Green Party
73% Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party
10% Donald Trump, Republican Party
10% Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party
Boulder County Totals: State of Colorado Totals:
Stein: 1.9% 1.3%
Clinton: 70.6% 47.2%
Trump: 21.9% 44.4%
Johnson: 4.2% 5.0%
We had some great conversations about these summary statistics. What can we tell about the population of students at our school compared to the county? Is our country representative of the State? Good stuff.
Here’s some of the more interesting results based on our class discussions of the school-wide election.
Presidential Results:
81% females voted for Clinton while 67% of males did. That means a girl in our school is 14% more likely to have voted for Clinton than a boy.
Though we did not have a large percentage of students voting for Trump, males were twice as likely to vote for Trump as females.
8th graders were much more likely to vote for Trump as any of the other grade levels.
8th graders had a lot more variation in who they voted for than the other grades. We thought this had to do with the opportunity in social studies to study the parties and decide who students felt more aligned with.
In terms of ethnicity, there were also some interesting results. Some of the results are thrown off based on the small numbers of certain types of minority students in our school. The Hispanic/Latino students in our school voted overwhelmingly for Clinton (9 out of 10). The largest showing for Trump came from our Asian students at 16% followed by our White students at 9%.
The Asian students in our school had the strongest showing for Trump
Sugar Tax Results:
One of the local issues here in Boulder, CO was a proposed tax on sugary drinks. When you divide the results by gender, the girls in our school voted in favor of the tax 60-40, while the boys voted almost the exact opposite. We had some great discussions about why this might happen. The class consensus was that this might be due to the underlying issue of body image in our culture. Girls feel much more pressured than boys to be thin. This directly relates to their eating choices.
When you look at how the grades voted on the sugar tax you get a slightly different story. The 6th and 7th graders voted yes on the sugar tax. 6th grade approved the tax by a 15% spread. The percentage of students in favor in 7th grade shrunk to 6%, while the 8th graders voted against the sugar tax by a 15% spread. We wondered whether this was the older students exerting more independence--i.e. I can make my own decisions, please don’t tell me what to eat or drink.
It's too bad there's not a national election every year, this was engagement gold for my stats unit in Algebra 1!
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