Last week, Los Angeles elec­ted a new may­or. In the pro­cess of cov­er­ing of the race these past few months, The Data Desk as­sembled a vari­ety of data sets about may­or­al elec­tions, both past and present.

We’ve already re­leased some of it. Today, we are put­ting out much more with the hope that it will save someone some­where some hassle in the fu­ture.

Cur­rently it’s a bit of a pain to map out may­or­al res­ults as we did here. The data files that break down the vote for each pre­cinct are pub­lished in an odd format. The map files that plot out each pre­cinct’s shape must be pur­chased on a com­pact disc at $20 per elec­tion. Once you have the files, you still need to merge them to­geth­er to make a map.

So let us be the last ones to do it.

Down­load the data

For each elec­tion, we are re­leas­ing three files. First, a SHP map file that in­cludes both the shape of each pre­cinct as well as the res­ults for each can­did­ate. Second, a GeoJSON map file with the same. Third, a CSV file with the res­ults for each pre­cinct but without a map.

Much re­spect due

While a bit of a pain to ac­quire and wrangle, none of this data would ex­ist without the work of the pub­lic ser­vants at the Los Angeles City Clerk’s of­fice. Thanks to them.