American election results at the precinct level.

We describe the creation and quality assurance of a dataset containing nearly all available precinct-level election results from the 2016, 2018, and 2020 American elections. Precincts are the smallest level of election administration, and election results at this granularity are needed to address many important questions. However, election results are individually reported by each state with little standardization or data quality assurance. We have collected, cleaned, and standardized precinct-level election results from every available race above the very local level in almost every state across the last three national election years. Our data include nearly every candidate for president, US Congress, governor, or state legislator, and hundreds of thousands of precinct-level results for judicial races, other statewide races, and even local races and ballot initiatives. In this article we describe the process of finding this information and standardizing it. Then we aggregate the precinct-level results up to geographies that have official totals, and show that our totals never differ from the official nationwide data by more than 0.457%.

Developing Smokeless Tobacco Prevention Messaging for At-Risk Youth: Early Lessons from "The Real Cost" Smokeless Campaign.

Introduction: Smokeless tobacco (SLT) use continues to be a significant public health challenge in the United States, particularly among young males in rural areas, where use remains disproportionately high. In support of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's first nationwide SLT public education campaign, formative research was conducted to inform campaign strategy development and test creative concepts. Methods: Qualitative research methods were used to inform the strategic direction of the campaign, identify salient message themes, and refine creative concepts. Focus groups were conducted with 252 rural male youth ages 12-17 in seven states. Groups were organized by SLT status (i.e., at-risk for initiating vs. experimenting with SLT) and age group. Results: SLT use is culturally ingrained in rural communities, and rural youth are commonly exposed to SLT through close relationships. Among this group, "dipping" (SLT use) has strong cultural significance and is perceived as safe. Members of the target audience are receptive to straightforward facts delivered by authentic messengers about the potentially harmful consequences of SLT use, specifically those that leverage the progression of short-term consequences (e.g., white patches) to long-term health effects. Conclusions: This study addresses SLT literature gaps related to youth knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs by summarizing audience learnings from formative research that was used to develop the first national SLT public education campaign.