Immediate help needed for an Access beginner!

xyz123

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I am trying to create a database that can store information relating to the past 5 PRESIDENTIAL elections (including the most recent one) for the states of California, Texas, Ohio, New York, Iowa, and New Hampshire.

The information I have to store are the first and last names of the major party candidates (both Presidential and Vice Presidential), their popular and electoral votes in each state, and then the total electoral and popular votes of each state.

By the end, I'm going to have to generate queries and reports on who the winners were, who the losers were, and who ran multiple times and for which offices.

MY PROBLEM IS THAT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO GO ABOUT BREAKING THE INFORMATION INTO SEPARATE TABLES. E.G. HOW TO SEPARATE THE INFORMATION TO ITS MOST BASIC. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE PRIMARY KEYS FOR EACH TABLE SHOULD BE, LET ALONE HOW MANY TABLES I SHOULD HAVE AND DIVIDED HOW.

IF SOMEONE COULD HELP ME CONCEPTUALIZE ALL THAT, I CAN PULL OFF THE REST ON MY OWN.

Any help would be appreciated more than you could possibly imagine. Please, please help.
 
IF it helps, this is the information I think I will need:


Last Name
First Name
Office (ran for)
Election Year
State
Electoral votes received
Popular votes received
Total electoral votes
Total popular votes


I could be wrong too, keep in mind.
 
And if there's anything else I can tell you that will enable you to help me, don't hesitate to ask. I don't mind.
 
Basically, you need one table per entity. Your entities appear to be candidates, states and votes. That suggests three tables. You also have two types of office and two types of vote so that suggests two further look up tables. There are no obvious primary keys so use autonumbers.

Give that a go and post back with any problems.
 
MY PROBLEM IS THAT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO GO ABOUT BREAKING THE INFORMATION INTO SEPARATE TABLES. E.G. HOW TO SEPARATE THE INFORMATION TO ITS MOST BASIC. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE PRIMARY KEYS FOR EACH TABLE SHOULD BE, LET ALONE HOW MANY TABLES I SHOULD HAVE AND DIVIDED HOW.

IF SOMEONE COULD HELP ME CONCEPTUALIZE ALL THAT, I CAN PULL OFF THE REST ON MY OWN.

Have a google on "Normalization" and read all about it, though it is hard to believe that if you dont know about that and/or cannot "conceptualize" all that, you can then do the rest???

Oh and ... get a new keyboard... this one is broken!

P.S. Welcom to the AWF
 

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