Command Line Analytics

Analysing Election Results like a boss

Recently, I’ve written a couple of articles analysing Sri Lankan Presidential Elections, including: Election Projections, Bellwether Polling Divisions, On Floating Voters and A Brief History of Sri Lankan Presidential Elections.

All these analyses are based on data I scraped from the Election Commission Website. I have shared this data in JSON and CSV format on GitHub.

In this article, I share a couple simple commands you can use to answer some interesting questions about elections.

I use data from presidential_election_results.denorm.csv, which is a table of all the results in our seven Presidential Elections.

Basic Commands

To see all the data, run

cat presidential_election_results.denorm.csv

This will print out all the lines in the file:

year,result_code,electoral_district_name,polling_division_name,party,candidate,votes,percentage,affiliation
1982,01A,Colombo,Colombo North,UNP,Junius Richard Jayewardene,29380,69.03,green
1982,01A,Colombo,Colombo North,SLFP,Hector Kobbekaduwa,10641,25.0,blue
1982,01A,Colombo,Colombo North,JVP,Rohana Wijeweera,1645,3.86,red
1982,01A,Colombo,Colombo North,LSSP,Colvin Reginald de Silva,361,0.85,red
1982,01A,Colombo,Colombo North,ACTC,Kumar Ponnambalam,477,1.12,yellow
1982,01A,Colombo,Colombo North,NSSP,Vasudeva Nanayakkara,60,0.14,red
1988,01A,Colombo,Colombo North,UNP,Ranasinghe Premadasa,22389,63.26,green
1988,01A,Colombo,Colombo North,SLFP,Sirimavo Bandaranaike,10744,30.36,blue
1988,01A,Colombo,Colombo North,SLPP,Oswin Abeygunasekara,2259,6.38,purple
...

To see the field headings, you can run:

head -n 1 presidential_election_results.denorm.csv

Giving,

year,result_code,electoral_district_name,polling_division_name,party,candidate,votes,percentage,affiliation

To see the field headings and first line, run:

head -n 2 presidential_election_results.denorm.csv
year,result_code,electoral_district_name,polling_division_name,party,candidate,votes,percentage,affiliation
1982,01A,Colombo,Colombo North,UNP,Junius Richard Jayewardene,29380,69.03,green

This means that in 1982, Junius Richard Jayewardene of the UNP (green) got 29,380 votes (a percentge of 69.03%) in the Colombo North polling divisions, which is part of the Colombo electoral district, and has result code 01A.

You can format this output a bit better by replacing the commas with tabs:

head -n 2 presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | tr , ‘\t’
year result_code electoral_district_name polling_division_name party candidate votes percentage affiliation
1982 01A Colombo Colombo North UNP Junius Richard Jayewardene 29380 69.03 green

If you want to see only a few fiels, say 5) Party, 6) Candidate and 7) Votes:

head -n 2 presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | cut -d, -f5,6,7 | tr , '\t'
party candidate votes
UNP Junius Richard Jayewardene 29380

To see all the Colombo North Results for 1982:

cat  presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | grep 1982 | grep "Colombo North"  | cut -d, -f5,6,7 | tr , '\t'
UNP Junius Richard Jayewardene 29380
SLFP Hector Kobbekaduwa 10641
JVP Rohana Wijeweera 1645
LSSP Colvin Reginald de Silva 361
ACTC Kumar Ponnambalam 477
NSSP Vasudeva Nanayakkara 60

In descending order of votes:

cat  presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | grep 1982 | grep "Colombo North"  | sort -t, -nr -k7 | cut -d, -f5,6,7 | tr , '\t'
UNP Junius Richard Jayewardene 29380
SLFP Hector Kobbekaduwa 10641
JVP Rohana Wijeweera 1645
ACTC Kumar Ponnambalam 477
LSSP Colvin Reginald de Silva 361
NSSP Vasudeva Nanayakkara 60

To find how many candidates contested in Colombo North in 1982,

cat  presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | grep 1982 | grep "Colombo North"  | wc -l
6

Answer: six candidates.

See all the results for the SLFP in 1982, from polling divisions, excluding postal votes:

cat  presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | awk '!/Final Results|AICUM|Postal/' | grep 1982  | grep SLFP | cut -d, -f4,7,8 | tr , '\t' | sort
Agalawatta 21041 41.25
Akmeemana 19623 46.97
Akuressa 20389 40.57
Ambalangoda 16225 43.99
Ampara 20552 38.71
Anamaduwa 19757 45.71
Anuradhapura-East 14944 45.31
Anuradhapura-West 15054 42.19
Aranayake 10433 35.95
Attanagalla 31495 55.92
...

Answering questions like a Nerd

How many candidates have ever contested the presidential election? Who are they?

awk 'NR > 1' presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | cut -d, -f6 | sort | uniq | wc -l
64

Answer: 64

awk 'NR > 1' presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | cut -d, -f6 | sort | uniq
A. A. Suraweera
A. Dissanayaka
A. K. J. Arachchige
A. S. P. Liyanage
A. W. Premawardhana
Abdul Rasool
Aithurus Mohamed Illias

Who are the Rajapaksa’s who have contested the Presidential Election? Sirisenas? Sinhes?

awk 'NR > 1' presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | cut -d, -f6 | sort | uniq | grep Rajapaksa
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Namal Ajith Rajapaksa
awk 'NR > 1' presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | cut -d, -f6 | sort | uniq | grep Sirisena
Arachchige Rathnayaka Sirisena
Maithripala Sirisena
awk 'NR > 1' presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | cut -d, -f6 | sort | uniq | grep sin
Arthur Jayasena Ranasinghe
Hudson Samarasinghe
Rajiva Wijesinha
Ranasinghe Premadasa
Ranil Wickremesinghe

What parties have contested presidential elections? Any with SL?

awk 'NR > 1' presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | cut -d, -f5 | sort | uniq
AACAAKO
ACAKO
ACTC
DNM
DUA
DUNF
FSP
awk 'NR > 1' presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | cut -d, -f5 | sort | uniq | grep SL
SLFP
SLLP
SLMP
SLNF
SLPF
SLPP

What is the highest percentage of votes a candidate has won in a polling division? Who and when?

cut -d, -f1,4,6,7,8 presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | awk '!/Postal|Final/'  | sort -t, -nr -k5 | head -n 5 | tr , '\t'
2005 Kilinochchi Ranil Wickremesinghe 1 100.0
1994 Point Pedro Chandrika Kumaratunga 8 100.0
1994 Manipay Chandrika Kumaratunga 18 100.0
1994 Kayts Chandrika Kumaratunga 14761 97.16
2005 Paddiruppu Ranil Wickremesinghe 24142 94.72

Answer: Ranil Wickremesinghe won the only vote cast in Kilinochchi in 2005. As trivially, Chandrika Kumaratunga won all 8 and 18 votes cast in Point Pedro and Manipay respectively in 1994.

Who won Borella in 2005?

grep Borella presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | grep 2005 | cut -d, -f5,6,7,8 | sort -t, -nr -k3 | tr , '\t'
UNP Ranil Wickremesinghe 25784 61.67
UPFA Mahinda Rajapaksa 15644 37.42
USP Siritunga Jayasuriya 115 0.28
ULPP Victor Hettigoda 80 0.19
JSP A. A. Suraweera 60 0.14
NLF Chamil Jayaneththi 32 0.08
SEP Wije Dias 23 0.06
ULF Anura De Silva 22 0.05
RPP Aruna de Soyza 18 0.04
SLNF Wimal Geeganage 17 0.04
DUA A. K. J. Arachchige 10 0.02
SLPF P. Nelson Perera 3 0.01
UNAF H. S. Dharmadwaja 1 0.0

Answer: Ranil Wickremesinghe with 61.67% of the vote.

Who has historically won Attanagalla?

grep Attanagalla presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | sort -t, -nr -k8  | head -n 7 | sort | cut -f 1,5,6,7,8 -d, | tr , '\t'
1982 SLFP Hector Kobbekaduwa 31495 55.92
1988 SLFP Sirimavo Bandaranaike 35758 60.12
1994 PA Chandrika Kumaratunga 51923 73.64
1999 PA Chandrika Kumaratunga 51204 65.79
2005 UPFA Mahinda Rajapaksa 52393 60.52
2010 UPFA Mahinda Rajapaksa 61337 66.3
2015 UPFA Mahinda Rajapaksa 54777 51.71

What is the highest number of votes a candidate has won in a polling division? Which year was that?

cat  presidential_election_results.denorm.csv | awk '!/Final Results|AICUM|Postal/' | sort -t, -nr -k 7 | head -n 5 | cut -d, -f1,4,6,7 | tr , '\t'
2015 Nuwara Eliya-Maskeliya Maithripala Sirisena 171578
2005 Nuwara Eliya-Maskeliya Ranil Wickremesinghe 156343
2010 Nuwara Eliya-Maskeliya Sarath Fonseka 112866
2015 Batticaloa Maithripala Sirisena 97779
1994 Nuwara Eliya-Maskeliya Chandrika Kumaratunga 94262

Answer: Maithripala Sirisena won 171,578 votes in Nuwara Eliya-Maskeliya in 2015

Please comment with your own interesting command-line analytics!

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Caveat: For all the examples above, there are A) more efficient, B) more elegant, C) more correct, alternatives. For convenience, and laziness, I typed out whatever first came to mind 😉