Before the Election:
Leading up to the election we were curious as to how violence in certain areas could swing the election for one candidate or another. In order to win this election one candidate must win at least 50% of the vote or the election will go on to a run-off election in October. The incumbent candidate, Hamed Karzai is Pushtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, while the challenger is Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a Tajik. We were able to look at historic election results and ethnicity; two strong indicators for the 2009 election, as well as violence in Afghanistan. An attack in either a Pashtun or a Tajik area could hurt turnout for that ethnicity giving favor to the opposing candidate.

Here we have a map showing recent IED attacks and areas that voted with Karzai in 2004:

Here is a map showing the Same IED attacks with the areas Voting for the Tajik Candidate:

Election Day:
On Election day (August 20th) we were able to get preliminary reports of violence from the field. Leading up the the election, we were able to collect data on the estimated number of voters per province. We started looking at this data to see if violence would sway the election towards one candidate or another. After running a correlation between Tajik populations and the number of people killed on election day we find very little correlation (-.05) between the two attributes.

Correlations between Pashtun populations and election day violence shows a slightly stronger correlation (0.17) than what we found with the Tajiks, but still shows a very weak correlation with violence.

Here we have correlated the total estimated voters for each province with the attacks on election day and find our strongest correlation (0.38). This seems to show that the attacks were focused more on individuals voting rather than trying to sway the results of the election by targeting a specific demographic.

Conclusions:
The attacks taking place on election day weren’t for or against a specific candidate but more specifically towards the political process and the people of Afghanistan who would support a free and open democratic process. Attacks were focused in areas with high expected turnout rates regardless of ethnicity or voting history. Neither Karzai nor Dr. Abdullah seem have gained or lost a significant amount of votes from election day violence. To view these maps and more related to the 2009 Afghanistan Presidential Election visit our dashboard, or for access to the raw data, visit Finder! (this link will bring you to search results for the Afghanistan election)

*Note on data: Ethnicity data for the Tajik and Pashtun populations was incomplete at the district level and aggregated up to the Province level for better coverage, however the data may be less accurate than the incomplete district level data.

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