elex_challenge.md

Basic data analysis pipeline challenge

Overview

Below is a code challenge designed to help you practice a variety of skills:

• Download remote data
• Write data to a text file to local disk
• Read and write CSV files
• Generate summary data using dicts

Yes, you could use the pandas library to arguably simplify these tasks, but the point is to get some reps using these more basic Python tools and workflows.

The Challenge

Write code to :

• Download this fake election data using this election CSV link
• Save the code to a local file called election_data
• Read the data using the csv library
• Use dictionaries to tally the following stats:
• Total votes by candidate
• Total votes by party
• Use the csv module to write two new spreadsheets:
• candidate_totals.csv - contains name and vote_total fields
• party_totals.csv - contains party and vote_total fields