Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Patrick Donnay

Abstract

North Dakota’s oil boom is causing some of its countries to experience significant population increases. I study the effect this is having on the politics of North Dakota. To assess the effect of increased oil production on the population of counties and its effect on the politics of those counties I gathered statistics at the county level in the areas of oil production, populations including total, black, Hispanic, white, and male populations, and voting behavior (Republican or Democrat) from the United State Census, the North Dakota Secretary of State, and the North Dakota Industrial Commission, Department of Natural Resources. My hypothesis is that the increased populations of oil boom counties will cause those counties to vote more Republican. An early finding is that there are significant increases in oil production in some counties as well as significant population increases. Next steps will include looking more into the demographic profile of these population changes and how these profiles effect voting behaviors.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.