ATU Elections Competition for Secondary School Students

ATU Sligo Computing Lecturers are partnering with Ocean FM, on the forthcoming elections. To foster the interest of second level students in both the opportunities of Technology and in the Election process, we have created a data analytics challenge based on the Tallies from the previous general election.


The prize for the winning student is a Dell Latitude 5440 14” laptop


To complete this challenge, students are required to download the excel spreadsheet and answer the following five questions:

  1. What is the percentage overall vote share for each candidate? Is the percentage overall vote share for each candidate different, in each of the four counties that make up the constituency, than their overall vote share?
  1. What is the percentage overall vote share in the constituency by party? Is the percentage overall vote share for each party different,  in each of the four counties that make up the constituency, than their overall vote share?
  1. Is there a difference in the percentage vote share of parties in rural areas compared to the major urban areas (pop. > 2000) in the constituency (Sligo, Boyle, Carrick on Shannon, Tubbercurry, Ballyshannon)
  1. Was there a difference in the percentage share of the votes on a party basis in the constituency when compared to the actual percentage share of the votes each party got nationally in the 2020 general election? Were there variations in this across the four counties that make up the constituency?
  1. Produce an interesting infographic to visualise the results of the analysis carried out to answer the questions above.

Each student must email their submission including the spreadsheet with the entered formula, the infographic, and the answers to questions 1 to 4 above to elections@nullatu.ie

Closing date for the competition is 14th June @5:00pm.