Political Science

Integrates data, authoritative analyses, concise explanations, and historical material to provide a research and reference tool on voting and elections in America. From the American voter, to major and minor political parties, to actual races for Congress, the presidency, and governorships, the collection provides context-driven intelligence on the state of elections in America. Chronological coverage varies by office. Presidential coverage begins 1789. Election data can be downloaded.

Elections A to Z explains how campaigns and elections are conducted in the United States. Entries include short definitions of terms and in-depth essays exploring vital aspects of campaigns and elections.

The Encyclopedia of U.S. Campaigns, Elections, and Electoral Behavior covers virtually everything one would want to know about American political campaigns. With more than 450 entries, these two comprehensive volumes present a significant array of topics of campaigns, elections, and electoral behavior.

The CQ Press Guide to U.S. Elections, Seventh Edition is a comprehensive, two-volume reference providing information on the U.S. electoral process, an in-depth analysis of specific political eras and issues, and everything in between.

Provides a searchable collection of election returns from the earliest years of American democracy. The data were compiled by Philip Lampi. The American Antiquarian Society and Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives have mounted it online for you with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Established in 1999 at the University of California-Santa Barbara, this repository provides nearly 100,000 current and historical executive branch documents on American Presidents from 1789 to 2008. The site also includes election data and statistics for presidential elections from 1789 to current.

Provides statistics and analysis of women's voter registration and turnout in presidential and non-presidential years. Statistics are taken from data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census Current Population Reports, Series P-20, "Voting and Registration in the Election of November 1964" and subsequent reports for all years through 2018.

Formerly the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, CES was started in 2006 as a consortium of 39 universities aimed at studying the midterm Congressional elections. It is a nationally representative annual online sample survey of more than 50,000 American adults conducted before and after the United States presidential and midterm elections and administered by the data and analytics group YouGov.

Integrates data, authoritative analyses, concise explanations, and historical material to provide a research and reference tool on voting and elections in America. From the American voter, to major and minor political parties, to actual races for Congress, the presidency, and governorships, the collection provides context-driven intelligence on the state of elections in America. Chronological coverage varies by office. Presidential coverage begins 1789. Election data can be downloaded.

Data Planet provides a vast collection of US and international statistics that cover a wide range of subjects. The Government and Politics section provides data for U.S. House elections, U.S. Presidential Elections, and U.S. Senate Elections, including total votes cast, vote count, and vote percentages. Under the Subject tab on the Data Planet homepage, choose Government and Politics and scroll to election resources using the left navigation bar under Datasets.

Provides U.S. election data, including tables, graphs, and maps for presidential (1789-present), senatorial (1990+), and gubernatorial (1990+) elections. Provides registration and turnout data for voting in U.S. presidential and congressional general elections by state and county. Data in Excel.

L2 Voter and Consumer Files provides voter files on over 200 million voters plus 2.3 billion voter history records. This is a continuously updated database of every registered voter in the United States. It includes basic socio-demographic indicators (some modeled), consumer preferences, party affiliation, voting history, and more. Please go to the L2 Voter Guide, which explains how to access L2.

Provides data for U.S. House, Senate, Presidential, state-level, and county-level election data. Data can be downloaded through the Harvard Dataverse site.

This dataset contains counts of voter registration and voter turnout for all counties in the United States for the years 2004-2018. It also contains measures of each county's Democratic and Republican partisanship, including six-year longitudinal partisan indices for 2006-2016.

Provides election returns by state and precinct from 2000 - current.

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, located at Cornell University, is the world’s leading archive of public opinion survey data. Data for U.S. Presidential Elections provided from 1976 - current. Issues covered include:

The ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic conditions of the United States. The online version includes monthly updates to tables, deep searching at the line-item level, powerful facets for narrowing search results, image and spreadsheet versions of all current and historical tables, along with links to provider sites.

Provides statistics for official vote counts for federal elections from 1920 to the present from the official sources among the various states and territories. The original documents are available in scanned PDF format for historical data. Also available is the latest official list of nominees for the Office of United States Senator and for the Office of United States Representative, and the latest statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Elections of November.

Voting and Registration data have been collected biennially in the November Current Population Survey (CPS) since 1964. The statistics presented are based on replies to survey inquiries about whether individuals were registered and/or voted in specific national elections. Data tables are available from 1960 to 2020.

CFI is a nonpartisan campaign finance policy organization established in 1999 to conduct studies and offer recommendations on campaign finance reform. CFI focuses on candidate and party fund-raising and interest groups' spending. The Tables, Charts, and Data section provide contributions expenditures, and other cost data associated with federal elections including House, Senate, presidential, political parties, and interest groups.

Research from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), addresses the legal, legislative and financial landscape for policymaking in the area of U.S.state campaign finance.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the non-partisan research arm of the United States Congress. CRS experts prepare reports to assist Senators and Congressmen throughout the legislative process, providing background information and detailed analysis on various public policy issues. The following reports are the latest available on the issue of Campaign Finance.

Sage Data provides a vast collection of US and international statistics that cover a wide range of subjects. The Government and Politics section provides campaign finance data for Committees, House candidates, Presidential candidates, and Senate candidates. Under the Subject tab on the Data Planet homepage, choose Government and Politics and scroll to campaign finance resources using the left navigation bar under Datasets.

Intended as a general resource for the study of campaign finance and ideology in American politics. The database was developed as part of the project on Ideology in the Political Marketplace, which is an ongoing effort to perform a comprehensive ideological mapping of political elites, interest groups, and donors using the common-space CFscore scaling methodology (Bonica 2014). The resulting database contains over 130 million political contributions made by individuals and organizations to local, state, and federal elections spanning a period from 1979 to 2014. A corresponding database of candidates and committees provides additional information on state and federal elections.

The FEC is the official U.S. government agency that collects all financial information on candidates, parties, and PACs. Disclosed campaign finance information available includes: candidate, PAC, and party summaries; financial disclosure reports filed electronically by House and Presidential campaigns, parties, and PACs; financial disclosure reports filed by House, Senate, and Presidential campaigns; parties and PACs from 1993 to the present; data files including contributor, candidate, committee and summary data; disbursements and obligations for electioneering communications; reports of independent expenditures made and contributions received, and summaries of select Presidential filings.

Developed by the National Institute on Money in Politics which tracks political donations in all 50 states. The website provides statistics, data, and other information on money in state politics. Also provides a National Overview Map that gives a state-by-state summary of campaign finance information.

Search, visualize, and download lobbying data in the U.S. between 1999 and 2020.

Developed by The Center for Responsive Politics, this website tracks money and its effects on U.S. politics, elections, and public policy. OpenSecrets provides financial tracking for Presidential elections, Congressional elections, Congressional committee earmarks, personal finances, outside spending, and contributions to political parties.

The Nutshell series offers concise summaries of more than 150 legal topics, providing well-written, understandable introductions to most fields of law. Election Law in a Nutshell provides a thorough description of the laws governing voting rights, elections, and the electoral process in the United States. Topics addressed include the fundamental right to vote, gerrymandering, minority voting rights, ballot access, voter identification, recounts, direct democracy, and campaign finance.

NCSL provides extensive lists of resources on election laws for the 50 states including information on laws associated with Voter ID state requirements, policies for election observers, poll watcher qualifications, and international election observation abroad.

U.S. government website that provides an overview of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as other voting-related legal statutes enforced by the Department of Justice. The site provides updates on recent legal activity related to voting statutes, detailed history of federal voting rights laws including the effect of the Voting Rights Act, voting rights policies and guidelines, and a listing of cases involving voting litigation in the federal courts.

A joint project of Election Law at Ohio State and the SCOTUSblog. The site provides up-to-date information on major election law cases as they make their way through every level of the court system.

This collection of data sets provides information on ideological cohesion and ambiguity of party positions along with information on framing effects by competing parties and the media. The data covers the policy standpoints parties and their representatives have communicated in the media along with valence-related statements, such as references to competence or integrity. Coding was based on pre-electoral coverage of major newspapers for two recent (national) electoral campaigns in ten European countries (Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.)

CSES is a collaborative program of research among election study teams from around the world. Participating countries include a common module of survey questions in their post-election studies. The resulting data are deposited along with voting, demographic, district, and macro variables. The studies are then merged into a single public dataset for use in comparative study and cross-level analysis.

COMEPELDA consolidates information on European Parliament elections into one comprehensive source. It provides information on formal electoral rules as well as national-level and district-level election results for parties and individual politicians (including full candidate lists). The use of existing and new key variables makes it easy to link the data across the different units of observation (country, party, candidate, member of parliament) and join them with external information. Currently, the data cover four elections (1999–2014).

(CLEA) is a repository of detailed election results at the constituency level for lower house legislative elections from around the world.

Database of Political Institutions presents institutional and electoral results data for about 180 countries for 42 years, from 1975–2017. Measures include checks and balances, tenure and stability of the government, identification of party affiliation and ideology, and fragmentation of opposition and government parties in the legislature, among others.

This dataset provides data on electoral volatility and its internal components in parliamentary elections (lower house) in 20 countries of Western Europe for the period 1945-2015. It covers the entire universe of Western European elections held after World War II under democratic regimes. Data for Greece, Portugal, and Spain have been collected after their democratizations in the 1970s. Altogether, a total of 347 elections (or, more precisely, electoral periods) are included.

Provides details on upcoming national elections and referendums around the world. Includes data on electoral systems, political parties and candidates, and key issues at stake in each election. You can find historical information on all national elections held since the database's creation in 1998.

Provides comparative data on electoral systems used in 217 countries and territories across the globe. Compared to other similar datasets, this expansive international coverage makes this database the most comprehensive source of information in the elections field. Interactive tools, including maps and graphs, allow users to easily compare regions and sub-regions, filter necessary data, and export raw data for further analyses. Country pages provide in-depth country-level data in a historical format.

EES offers data about electoral behavior in European Parliament elections. The data covers topics such as the evolution of a political community in the European Union, citizens' perceptions of and preferences about the EU political regime, and the evaluation of its political performance.

(EU-NED) provides national and European parliamentary election results on the level of Eurostat’s NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 administrative units, covering all EU (& associated) countries over the period 1990-2020. EU-NED is integrated with the Party Facts platform, allowing for a seamless integration of a wealth of party-level data. EU-NED is optimized for combination with Eurostat’s Regional Database.

IDEA) is an intergovernmental organization that was founded by 14 member states in 1995. The database contains regularly updated Voter Turnout figures for national presidential and parliamentary elections since 1945, as well as European Parliament elections (including Voting from Abroad). In addition, it contains data on Direct Democracy, Electoral Justice, Electoral System Design, and Gender Quotas.

ParlGov is a data infrastructure for political science and contains information for all EU and most OECD democracies (37 countries). The database combines approximately 1700 parties, 1000 elections (9400 results), and 1600 cabinets (3900 parties).

Through its website the PDBA offers centralized and systematized information about institutions and political processes, national constitutions, branches of government, elections, political constitutional studies and other subjects related to the strengthening of democracy in the Americas. The full text of constitutions, election results, and rosters of political leaders (past and present) are available here.