4 Conclusion

As shown, the advantages of using the R programming language in reporting polls are (1) automated reporting, (2) visualizations, and (3) clean presentations of the election results. Because the code is reusable, the likelihood of human-made errors lower than if the information were to be generated manually. Adding visualizations allow readers to summarize the table information of the results, as well as the ability to examine other kinds of relationships beyond a simple table of results. Finally, these results may be cleanly presented through the use of external packages.

4.1 Limitations

One limitation of this work is that the dataset must be in a CSV format. Second, the dataset must be arranged such that there are five required columns: “Candidate,” “Early Voting,” “Election Day”, “Total Votes,” and “Total Votes %.” Third, it assumes that the link to the election results are fixed (i.e. does not change). Finally, some users may feel daunted by the amount of setup and programming required.

4.2 Future Work

In the future, this document will serve as a proof-of-concept for a web application via R Shiny in which users can upload polling results and said application would produce a basic written report with tables and graphs.