Guides: How Do I Find ~ Statistics and Data: Elections

Subscription Databases

CQ Voting and Elections Collection
A database of elections data. Coverage: 1789-present.
Sage Data
Access 550+ U.S. and international databases through one central searchable platform. Create custom data visualizations such as maps and trend charts. Master essential data literacy concepts with Data Basics, a reference library that offers guidance on working with statistics.

Elections - U.S.

United States General Election Predictions and Presidential Job Approval Statistics

Many institutions forecast U.S. general elections and offer information about presidential job approval and favorability, including the following websites.

Election Results Database

Historical U.S. Federal Election Results
Official results of past federal elections.
U.S. Election Exit Polls (Roper Center)
U.S. national, state, and primary Election Day exit polls since the 1970s. Since 1976, all polls include basic demographic variables (e.g., gender, race, education, etc.).
The American Presidency Project
Database of the electoral and popular vote results from 1789 to the present, maintained by the UCSB. Additional information such as presidential job approval rating and the number of executive orders is also available.
United States Election Project
Precinct-level general election results since 2012 with ESRI shapefiles. It also offers voter turnout data across states and demographics.
MIT Election Lab
Offers U.S. federal, state, and local election results since 2016 by state, district, county, and precinct.
Federal Election Commission
Campaign finance reports and data from 1993 to present.
OpenSecrets.org
A clearinghouse for data and analysis, tracking money in politics and its effect on elections and public policy. Includes financial data on campaigns, independent interest groups (i.e., 527 committees), lobbyists, congressional travel, and the personal finances of the president and members of Congress.
Center for American Women and Politics
Data and analysis of women's voting behavior, including statistics on turnout and the gender gap in voting.

The African American Electorate: A Statistical History by Hanes Walton; Donald R. Deskins; Sherman Puckett
Publication Date: 2012
A major work on the electoral history of African American voters from the Colonial era to the present. Downloadable data in Excel or .csv formats.
America Votes 31: 2013-2014
Call Number: JK1967 .A8
Data by state for presidential, gubernatorial and congressional races; congressional district data for recent congressional elections; and county level figures for the most recent elections.
Library owns: 1956/57-2013/14. Latest years are online.
Guide to U. S. Elections by Deborah S. Kalb (Editor)
Publication Date: 2016
Data on campaigns, election methods, and results.
A Statistical History of the American Electorate by Jerrold G. Rusk
Call Number: Ref JK1967 .R87 2001
Contains numerous tables on suffrage, voting, participation, and voter behavior, 1788–2000.
Voter Turnout in the United States 1788-2009 by Curtis Gans
Publication Date: 2010
Comprehensive turnout statistics for general and primary elections for presidential, congressional, and state gubernatorial races. Extensive tables provide state level figures (including partisan turnout) grouped by office or election type in 20 year chunks. Downloadable data in Excel or .csv formats.

American National Election Studies (ANES)
Surveys on voting, public opinion, and political participation in the U.S., 1948-current.
U.S. Census Bureau. Voting and Registration
Voting and registration by various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research This link opens in a new window
The largest collection of poll data anywhere. Broad topical coverage of opinions and behavior on social issues, politics, pop culture, and international affairs. Coverage: 1935-present.

NOTE: Registration required to view questions/results and to download data sets.
Video Tutorials
- iPOLL contains half a million survey questions and answers asked in the U.S. over the last 65 years by more than 150 survey organizations.
- RoperExpress provides on-demand access to datasets from thousands of studies for download in ASCII or SPSS formats.
- RoperExplorer is an online data analysis system; no programming skills required; choose dependent and independent variables and quickly produce frequencies and cross-tabulations.

PollyVote

Elections - International

Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA)
A repository of detailed election results at the constituency level for lower chamber and upper chamber legislative elections from around the world. The lower chamber dataset currently includes around 1,900 elections from 170 countries and territories.The upper chamber dataset currently includes 125 elections from 13 countries.
Voter Turnout Database
Contains the most comprehensive global collection of voter turnout statistics available.

Elections in Africa by Dieter Nohlen, Bernhard Thibaut and Michael Krennerich (Editors)
Call Number: COMPACT STACKS - Ref JQ1879.A55 E44 1999
Elections in Asia and the Pacific by Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz and Christof Hartmann (Editors)
Call Number: COMPACT STACKS - Ref JQ38 .E44 2001
Library owns vol. 1 - The Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia
Elections in the Americas by Dieter Nohlen (Editor)
Publication Date: 2005
Elections in Western Europe since 1815 by Daniele Caramani
Call Number: COMPACT STACKS - Ref JN94.A95 C368 2004
CD-ROM included.