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IAPR Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition

ANNPR 2012: Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition pp 201–212Cite as

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Using Self Organizing Maps to Analyze Demographics and Swing State Voting in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

Using Self Organizing Maps to Analyze Demographics and Swing State Voting in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

  • Paul T. Pearson22 &
  • Cameron I. Cooper23 
  • Conference paper
  • 1448 Accesses

  • 5 Citations

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNAI,volume 7477)

Abstract

Emergent self-organizing maps (ESOMs) and k-means clustering are used to cluster counties in each of the states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio by demographic data from the 2010 United States census. The counties in these clusters are then analyzed for how they voted in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, and political strategies are discussed that target demographically similar geographical regions based on ESOM results. The ESOM and k-means clusterings are compared and found to be dissimilar by the variation of information distance function.

Keywords

  • Kohonen self organizing map
  • k-means clustering
  • variation of information
  • United States election 2008
  • United States Census data 2010

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hope College, PO Box 9000, Holland, MI, 49422, USA

    Paul T. Pearson

  2. Fort Lewis College, 1000 Rim Drive, Durango, CO, 81301, USA

    Cameron I. Cooper

Authors
  1. Paul T. Pearson
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  2. Cameron I. Cooper
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), 38123, Trento, Italy

    Nadia Mana

  2. Institute of Neural Information Processing, University of Ulm, 89069, Ulm, Germany

    Friedhelm Schwenker

  3. Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Università di Siena, 53100, Siena, Italy

    Edmondo Trentin

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Cite this paper

Pearson, P.T., Cooper, C.I. (2012). Using Self Organizing Maps to Analyze Demographics and Swing State Voting in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election. In: Mana, N., Schwenker, F., Trentin, E. (eds) Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition. ANNPR 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7477. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33212-8_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33212-8_19

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-33211-1

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