Title of Abstract: A Statistical, Historical, and Political Approach to Analyzing Maine’s Referendum History
Name of Mentor: Jack O’Brien
Mentor’s Organization or Department: Department of Mathematics, Bowdoin College
Research Abstract: The purpose of this project was to analyze the recently digitized Maine state referendum results from a statistical, historical, and political perspective. As for the statistical perspective, I worked in collaboration with Professor Jack O’Brien to develop a shiny app (created through the R programming software) that allows users to plot town-by-town referendum results for different years. In addition, using GitHub pages, I created a blueprint for a website that will be used to store future research results and voting distribution models. As for the political and historical perspectives, I consulted literature and experts on Maine’s political and electoral history to contextualize the statistical models produced through the shiny app.
Brittney McKinley ’21