Indiana has best gender representation on election day, while South Dakota shows worst racial disparity: Study
Personal-finance website WalletHub recently released a report assessing states having the best and worst representation on election day as the US nears the presidential and other polls on November 3. In its analysis, WalletHub experts have compared the distribution of voters of the 50 states that are going to the polls to the distribution of their electorates by various key demographic characteristics like age, gender and race.
According to the release, Maryland is the state with the best overall representation with 94.56 percent, followed by Virginia (94.13 percent), Indiana (93.21 percent), Pennsylvania (92.97 percent) and Minnesota (91.46 percent) in the next four spots. Oregon (91.45 percent), Massachusetts (91.37 percent), Nevada (91.18 percent), Wyoming (90. 59 percent) and New Jersey (90.46 percent) occupy the next five positions in the top 10. South Dakota, on the other hand, has the worst overall representation with 78.87 percent, followed by Kansas (82.35 percent), Tennessee (83.58 percent), Florida (83.62 percent), Washington (83.9 percent), Illinois (84.11 percent), Kentucky (84.95 percent), Hawaii (84.99 percent), Nebraska (85.08 percent) and Idaho (85.23 percent).
Best and worst racial representation
In terms of racial representation, Virginia tops the list with 95.29 percent, followed by Maryland (93.6 percent), South Carolina (91.23 percent), Indiana (91.2 percent) and Nevada (90.43 percent). In terms of worst racial representation too, South Dakota occupies the "first" position with 59.83 percent. Kentucky (60.15 percent), Florida (67.31 percent), Kansas (67.93 percent) and Illinois (68.60 percent) are the next four states in the list of the worst states.
Kentucky has best age representation, Hawaii worst
Kentucky has the best age representation with 97.11 percent while Hawaii has the worst with 77.02 percent. The next four states having the best age representation are Minnesota (93.85 percent), Rhode Island (93.38 percent), Pennsylvania (93.06 percent) and Maryland (92.97 percent), respectively. New Mexico (79.86 percent), South Dakota (81.49 percent),Texas (81.57 percent) and Arizona (81.18 percent) follow Hawaii to complete the list of the the worst five states.
Indiana has best gender representation
Indiana has the best gender representation with a near hundred percent record (99.94) while Oregon is in the second place with 99.7 percent, the WalletHub study said. North Carolina is third with 99.62 percent while Utah and Massachusetts follow next with 99.5 and 99.41 percent, respectively. Washington, on the other hand, has the worst gender representation at 92.34 percent while Arizona is second-worst with 93.54 percent. New Mexico (93.56 percent), South Carolina (93.84 percent) and Kansas (93.88 percent) are the three other states with the worst gender representation.
Incumbent President Donald Trump is challenged by former vice-president Joe Biden in this year's presidential election. While Trump was looking difficult to beat till around March, the outbreak of the pandemic and his administration's controversial reponse to it that has killed more than 200,000 people in the country and the race riots that broke out in the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis have threatened his prospects over the last few months. Biden now leads Trump in a number of key states and with the president himself getting infected by the deadly coronavirus, his mission to get a second term looks even tough.