This shapefile was obtained from the Texas Legislative Council and processed by members of the Voting Rights Data Institute (VRDI) and the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group (MGGG). VRDI was a 2018 summer intensive sponsored by MGGG at Tufts and MIT, with major support from a Bose Research Grant at MIT and from the Jonathon M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts.
The shapefile is currently available for download here: https://people.csail.mit.edu/ddeford/TX_vtds.zip.
Election data was downloaded from the Texas Legislative Council’s Texas Redistricting website (https://tlc.texas.gov/redist/data/data.html). In addition to the voting tabulation district shapefile and election data CSV files, shapefiles for state senate districts (PlanS172) and state house districts (PlanH407) were also downloaded. A 115th U.S. Congressional district shapefile was obtained from the Census (https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php). All demographic information was compiled by the Texas Legislative Council using 2010 Census data.
The shapefile topology was checked and minor corrections made using the check_shapefile_connectivity.py script (available in https://github.com/gerrymandr/Preprocessing). Roundoff (also available in https://github.com/gerrymandr/Preprocessing) was used to assign voting tabulation districts with U.S. congressional, state senate, and state house districts.
CNTYVTD
: VTD unique identifierVTD
: VTD nameWHITE
: 2010 White populationOTHER
: 2010 Other race populationHISPANIC
: 2010 Hispanic populationTOTPOP
: 2010 Total populationVAP
: 2010 Total voting age populationBLACK
: 2010 Black populationBLKHISP
: 2010 Black hispanic populationWVAP
: 2010 White voting age populationHISPVAP
: 2010 Hispanic voting age populationBHVAP
: 2010 Black hispanic voting age populationBVAP
: 2010 Black voting age populationOTHVAP
: 2010 Other race voting age populationCOUNTY
: County nameFIPS
: County FIPS codePRES12R
: Number of votes for 2012 Republican presidential candidatePRES12D
: Number of votes for 2012 Democratic presidential candidateSEN12R
: Number of votes for 2012 Republican senate candidateSEN12D
: Number of votes for 2012 Democratic senate candidateTOTVR12
: Number of registered voters in 2012 general electionTOTTO12
: Number of ballots cast in 2012 general electionSEN14R
: Number of votes for 2014 Republican senate candidateSEN14D
: Number of votes for 2014 Democratic senate candidateGOV14R
: Number of votes for 2014 Republican gubernatorial candidateGOV14D
: Number of votes for 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidateTOTVR14
: Number of registered voters in 2014 general electionTOTTO14
: Number of ballots cast in 2014 general electionPRES16D
: Number of votes for 2016 Democratic presidential candidatePRES16R
: Number of votes for 2016 Republican presidential candidateTOTVR16
: Number of registered voters in 2016 general electionTOTTO16
: Number of ballots cast in 2016 general electionUSCD
: U.S. Congressional District IDSEND
: Texas State Senate District IDHD
: Texas State House District IDAREA
: Area of vtd in square kilometersPERIM
: Perimeter of vtd in kilometers
This shapefile uses a NAD83/Texas State Mapping System projection (EPSG: 3081).
We give this shapefile an A rating. All data was obtained from the state government and was processed by MGGG staff.