Historical US Election Data

Columns

• year: Represents the year in which the election took place, spanning from 1976 to 2020.
• state: The full name of the US state involved in the election, with 51 unique state names present.
• state_po: The two-letter postal code abbreviation for the US state, also with 51 unique codes.
• state_fips: The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code for each state, ranging from 1 to 56.
• state_cen: The US Census Bureau's geographic code for the state, with values ranging from 11 to 95.
• state_ic: The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) code for the state, ranging from 1 to 82.
• office: Identifies the office contested in the election. For this dataset, it consistently indicates "US PRESIDENT".
• candidate: The name of the candidate who ran in the election. There are 270 unique candidate names recorded, though some entries are not available.
• party_detailed: The specific political party affiliation of the candidate, with 172 unique party descriptions, including major parties like REPUBLICAN and DEMOCRAT. Some entries are not available.
• writein: A boolean field indicating whether the candidate was a write-in candidate (true/false). Approximately 11% of records are marked as true.
• candidatevotes: The total number of votes received by a specific candidate. Vote counts range from 0 to over 11 million.
• totalvotes: The total number of votes cast in an election contest. These totals range from approximately 124,000 to 17.5 million.
• version: A version identifier for the dataset, consistently marked as 20210113.00.
• notes: Additional notes or comments, consistently recorded as "NA" for this dataset.
• party_simplified: A simplified classification of the candidate's political party, categorised into four unique groups, including "OTHER," "DEMOCRAT," and "REPUBLICAN".

Distribution

Usage

• Academic Research: Political scientists, historians, and sociologists can use this data to study electoral trends, party dynamics, and the impact of various factors on election outcomes.
• Data Analysis and Visualisation: Analysts can create visualisations of voting patterns, candidate performance, and shifts in electoral maps over time.
• Public Policy Analysis: Researchers can evaluate the historical impact of policies on voting behaviour and electoral success.
• Educational Purposes: Students can learn about the US electoral system and conduct their own analyses of historical election data.

Coverage

License

Who Can Use It

• Political Scientists: To research election patterns, voter behaviour, and party evolution.
• Data Analysts: For extracting insights, building models, and creating dashboards on historical election data.
• Journalists: To support investigative reporting, create data-driven articles, and fact-check political narratives.
• Students: To conduct academic projects and gain practical experience with real-world political data.
• Historians: To document and understand the evolution of US presidential elections.

Dataset Name Suggestions

• US Presidential Election Results (1976-2020)
• Historical US Election Data
• United States Presidential Vote Records
• American Elections Archive
• Post-Watergate US Presidential Data

Attributes