ABSTRACT
When I wrote the first version of this book in 1987, the information that was collected by the elections department was mostly raw data. It gave a person’s party affiliation, address, gender, ethnicity, and voting history. Also available was a list in zip code order for mailing, walking order for door-to-door canvassing, or alphabetical order for keeping records. Today, data in computers include everything from income, religion, ethnicity, and level of education to what a person does for a living. You can now get a more sophisticated look at the people in the district in which you are running because technology has made the information readily available. Bear in mind, however, that because populations change, there could be a difference in the makeup of an area from one election to the next. In Dade County, Florida, for example, there was a massive influx of immigrants from Cuba in 1980 which changed the population and 72voting patterns over the next few years. It amounted to a complete shift from Anglo to Latino and Democrat to Republican.
