Introduction

Data Reduction

Do You Know Where America Stands On Guns?

  • This is a FiveThirtyEight project found here
  • The article asks you to guess the level of support for different measures regarding gun control
    • What share of Americans support stricter gun laws?
    • What share of Americans support raising the minimum purchase age to 21?
    • What share of Americans support background checks for all gun purchases?
    • What share of Americans support blocking gun sales to people with a history of mental illness?
    • What share of Americans support arming teachers?
    • What share of Americans support banning assault weapons?
    • What share of Americans support banning high-capacity ammunition magazines?
    • What share of Americans support outlawing all guns?
  • The answers are summaries of multiple surveys
    • Overall % of Americans who support the subject
    • Republican support
    • Democratic support
  • We’ll be looking at the raw data found on GitHub.

Using R for Data Reduction

First, we’ll load the data into a dataframe object:

df <- read.csv(url('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fivethirtyeight/data/master/poll-quiz-guns/guns-polls.csv'), stringsAsFactors = F)

Next, we’ll take a peek at the dataset:

str(df)
## 'data.frame':    57 obs. of  9 variables:
##  $ Question          : chr  "age-21" "age-21" "age-21" "age-21" ...
##  $ Start             : chr  "2/20/18" "2/27/18" "3/1/18" "2/22/18" ...
##  $ End               : chr  "2/23/18" "2/28/18" "3/4/18" "2/26/18" ...
##  $ Pollster          : chr  "CNN/SSRS" "NPR/Ipsos" "Rasmussen" "Harris Interactive" ...
##  $ Population        : chr  "Registered Voters" "Adults" "Adults" "Registered Voters" ...
##  $ Support           : int  72 82 67 84 78 72 76 41 44 43 ...
##  $ Republican.Support: int  61 72 59 77 63 65 72 69 68 71 ...
##  $ Democratic.Support: int  86 92 76 92 93 80 86 20 20 24 ...
##  $ URL               : chr  "http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2018/images/02/25/rel3a.-.trump,.guns.pdf" "https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/npripsos-poll-majority-americans-support-policies-aimed-keep-guns-out-hands-dangerous-individuals" "http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/march_2018/americans_favor_raising_a"| __truncated__ "http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/375993-americans-support-no-gun-under-21" ...
head(df)
##   Question   Start     End           Pollster        Population Support
## 1   age-21 2/20/18 2/23/18           CNN/SSRS Registered Voters      72
## 2   age-21 2/27/18 2/28/18          NPR/Ipsos            Adults      82
## 3   age-21  3/1/18  3/4/18          Rasmussen            Adults      67
## 4   age-21 2/22/18 2/26/18 Harris Interactive Registered Voters      84
## 5   age-21  3/3/18  3/5/18         Quinnipiac Registered Voters      78
## 6   age-21  3/4/18  3/6/18             YouGov Registered Voters      72
##   Republican.Support Democratic.Support
## 1                 61                 86
## 2                 72                 92
## 3                 59                 76
## 4                 77                 92
## 5                 63                 93
## 6                 65                 80
##                                                                                                                                               URL
## 1                                                                                http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2018/images/02/25/rel3a.-.trump,.guns.pdf
## 2                   https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/npripsos-poll-majority-americans-support-policies-aimed-keep-guns-out-hands-dangerous-individuals
## 3 http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/march_2018/americans_favor_raising_age_to_buy_gun_not_enlist_or_vote
## 4                                                                http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/375993-americans-support-no-gun-under-21
## 5                                                                                      https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2525
## 6                                                     https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/zq33h2ipcl/econTabReport.pdf

For now, we only want to see the overall, republican, and democratic support levels for each of the questions. We’ll use the dplyr package to reduce the data to look at the average support by question:

library(dplyr)
reduced <- group_by(df, Question) %>%
  summarize(overall = mean(Support),
            republican = mean(Republican.Support),
            democratic = (mean(Democratic.Support)))
reduced
## # A tibble: 8 x 4
##   Question                    overall republican democratic
##   <chr>                         <dbl>      <dbl>      <dbl>
## 1 age-21                         75.9       67         86.4
## 2 arm-teachers                   42         72.2       17.2
## 3 background-checks              87.4       83.6       91.9
## 4 ban-assault-weapons            61.8       42.6       80.7
## 5 ban-high-capacity-magazines    67.3       52.7       83.9
## 6 mental-health-own-gun          85.8       86.7       87.5
## 7 repeal-2nd-amendment           10          5         15  
## 8 stricter-gun-laws              66.5       46.4       86.9

We can also include the population, which shows whether the respondents are registered voters:

reduced_pop <- group_by(df, Question, Population) %>%
  summarize(overall = mean(Support),
            republican = mean(Republican.Support),
            democratic = (mean(Democratic.Support))) %>%
  arrange(Question, Population)
reduced_pop
## # A tibble: 15 x 5
## # Groups:   Question [8]
##    Question                    Population        overall republican democratic
##    <chr>                       <chr>               <dbl>      <dbl>      <dbl>
##  1 age-21                      Adults               74.5       65.5       84  
##  2 age-21                      Registered Voters    76.4       67.6       87.4
##  3 arm-teachers                Adults               42.7       69         20.7
##  4 arm-teachers                Registered Voters    41.3       75.3       13.7
##  5 background-checks           Adults               84.5       77.5       92.5
##  6 background-checks           Registered Voters    88.6       86         91.6
##  7 ban-assault-weapons         Adults               62.5       48.5       77  
##  8 ban-assault-weapons         Registered Voters    61.6       41.4       81.4
##  9 ban-high-capacity-magazines Adults               73         59         88  
## 10 ban-high-capacity-magazines Registered Voters    66.3       51.7       83.2
## 11 mental-health-own-gun       Adults               92         88         96  
## 12 mental-health-own-gun       Registered Voters    84.6       86.4       85.8
## 13 repeal-2nd-amendment        Registered Voters    10          5         15  
## 14 stricter-gun-laws           Adults               70         51         88.5
## 15 stricter-gun-laws           Registered Voters    65.7       45.3       86.6