Reference no: EM133815643

Introduction

As you did further into the data, you decide to narrow your focus to examining how Vice President Harris performed in Pennsylvania counties where 50% or more of the population lived in places defined as 'rural' by the Census Bureau. You find that 35 of PA's 67 counties fit this description. You generate a simple scatterplot of the data, which is illustrated below:

As you look at the scatterplot, one data point in particular catches your eye. Monroe County, PA is the one majority-rural county that Harris nearly won (with 49.1% of the vote), which makes it a notable outlier among these 35 counties. The county's datapoint is labeled at the top of the scatterplot above. So, what exactly makes rural Monroe County so different from these other places that the Harris campaign was highly competitive there, but not in most other majority-rural counties, where she won an average of 27% of the vote?

Question

Imagine that you are deployed as part of a post-election research team to travel to Monroe County. The team's goal, simply put, is to understand why Harris nearly carried the vote in the county. While our quantitative analysis helped to zero in on Monroe County, that alone doesn't tell us why the election went the way it did there.

How might qualitative research methods (of the type we discussed in Module 6) help us to better understand why people voted the way they did in Monroe County? Explain, by making reference to different qualitative research approaches, and/or models provided by the various scholarly works that were given as examples in Module 6.