I'm developing a model for predicting the Sanders vote share in the upcoming Democratic Party primaries and caucuses (2016). Unlike others, I've chosen to create a county level model. Ultimately this can be used to do real-time analysis of votes as they come in on election night. If anyone wants to work on developing this model, I would LOVE to hear from you. I've got an early version of the model (and a real-time "vote swing" analyzer), but it needs work. Notably I need a method for estimating county level turnout so I can translate the county swings into a state wide swing.

As rent continues to rise at a rate faster than wages and inflation for most Americans, many people think that rent control could help.

Previously, I made a Rent Change Map for Philly that shows that most areas had rent increase faster than inflation between the 2000 Census and the 2009-2013 American Community Survey.

I decided to extend this analysis by looking at which demographic groups might benefit the most from rent control.

For the past five months, my Facebook news has been full of pro-Sanders friends posting stories about how well Sanders is doing in the polls. They systematically cherry-pick the most outlying polls, while ignoring the outliers that go in favor of Clinton.

For instance, they'll pick the recent NH poll that had Sanders 60% to 33% for Clinton, but ignore the two polls that have the race at 46% to 43% and 49% to 43%.

I used my Spatial Justice Test to do an analysis of the demographics (race and income) of who lives near where Bernie Sanders 2016 events are being organized.

The surprising result is that white people are the least likely of any race group, relative to their percent of the general US population, to be near Bernie 2016 events

Here is the analysis

I wrote a lengthy analysis of the 2015 Philly election and the potential for third party candidates featuring maps, charts, and data analysis!

Summary

I wrote a summary of the fight that I'm involved in on behalf of the Winchester Tenants who live in the Winchester Building in West Philly. We are fighting the Quaker non-profit Friends Rehabilitation Program which has failed to do proper building maintenance since 2011.

Winchester Tenants Demand Justice from the Friends Rehabilitation Program

I updated Justice Map to use the American Community Survey income data from 2013. So it now uses the five year summary/average of 2009-2013 for the API, when you click on the map, and for the map tile layers. The one exception is Puerto Rico which still uses the old data from 2007-2011.

I think that someone should create a black market (or maybe grey if located in the right country) for coyotes and other people providing illegal assistance to US immigrants. I think such a market could save dozens of lives annually and make the owner a lot of money (assuming they avoid arrest).

Over the past ten years, between 150 and 500 people have died each year crossing the US and Mexico border.

Two years ago Philadelphia passed the Actual Value Initiative (AVI) in an attempt to properly revalue the properties for taxation. I wrote about this earlier. Ever since, there have been two different stories. One side argues that the AVI was accurate and increased fairness, whereas the other side argues the opposite.

Previously my best guess as to the problem was that the two different sides used different data (different versions of the Office of Property Assessment data set).