How to map data by US county with shading to indicate values?

[RobertJimerson]

I'm on my trial subscription here and trying to do something pretty simple but having no luck and not finding much help via Google or elsewhere.

I am trying to create a map for housing starts by county for several US states.  Florida is where I am starting. I'd like to have the counties shaded to indicate the relative number of housings starts in each county. The counties with the most starts being the darkest and the counties with the fewest being the lightest or something like that.

I am using the topographic base map and adding the "US Counties (Generalized)" layer on top of that to prepare the map for my per county data.

The per county housing starts is in a CSV file that is formatted as : State, County, Housing Starts.  For example the record for Broward county looks like: Florida, Broward, 2570.  The map will recognize the state field but wants nothing to do with the County fields

I've tried adding the count seats to the CSV file and can at least get the cities to show as dots on the map. But no joy getting the housing starts data represented in a meaningful way on the map.

Surely there is an easy way to perform this simple mapping task here.  I hate to think that going back to MapPoint is an improvement.

Any guidance much appreciated

Best,

Bob

[RobertJimerson]

Another way to explain what I am trying to do would be to think of a post election map where voting patterns by county are presented by shading each county along a red to blue continuum based on percent of the vote received by the the Republican and Democrat candidates.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help with this or point me towards a source that can help.

Best,

Bob