URL: http://ssdc.ucsd.edu/ssdc/icp00013.html

TITLE: General Election Data for the United States, 1950-1990

• STUDYNO = 00013 (ICPSR Edition)
• INVESTIGATOR = Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
• DATA SOURCE = Official election returns provided by state governments
• DATE-UPDATED-SSDC = June 12, 2006

STUDY DESCRIPTION: The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research has prepared historical election data for the years from 1788-1990. This collection consists of several discrete data collections:

• United States Historical Election Returns, 1788-1823 (ICPSR 0079) contains general election returns for the offices of president, governor, and United States representative in the period 1788-1823. These returns comprise an extension of the general election collection (see UNITED STATES HISTORICAL ELECTION RETURNS, 1824-1968--ICPSR 0001) back to the occurrence of the first elections held under the United States Constitution. The data are recorded chiefly at the county level, although town-level returns were collected and preserved as well for the New England states. This collection of Early National period election returns is much less complete than the body of returns available for the years from 1824 to the present. Fugitive and nonextant sources resulted in the recovery of only approximately half of the possible returns for elections in this period.
• United States Historical Election Returns, 1824-1968 (ICPSR 0001) contains state files that list county-level returns for over 90 percent of all elections to the offices of president, governor, United States senator, and United States representative from 1824 through 1968. The data files include returns for all parties and candidates (as well as write-in and scattering votes if available for individual states), and for special elections as well as regularly-scheduled contests. Over 1,000 individual party names and many additional unaffiliated candidates are included.
• General Election Data for the United States, 1950-1990 (ICPSR 0013) consists of national files containing county-level returns for elections to the offices of president, United States senator and representative, and governor. Also included are returns for one additional statewide office (usually attorney general or secretary of state) for those states that elected state offices in 1970 through 1990.
• Candidate Name and Constituency Totals, 1788-1990 (ICPSR 0002), provides the names of candidates, political party name and ICPSR party ID code, and the number of votes received by each candidate in the constituency for elections between 1788 and 1990. The data include county-level returns for over 90 percent of all elections to the offices of president, governor, United States representative (1824-1990), and United States senator (1912-1990). The dataset also includes returns for approximately two-thirds of all elections to the offices of president, governor, and United States representative for the period 1788-1823. Returns for one additional statewide office are included beginning with the 1968 elections. Also presented are 1990 data from the District of Columbia election for United States senator and United States representative. The offices of two senators and one representative were created by the "District of Columbia Statehood Constitutional Convention Initiative," which was approved by District voters in 1980. Elections for these offices were postponed until the 1990 general election. The three offices are currently local District positions, which will turn into federal offices if the District becomes a state.
• Candidate and Constituency Statistics of Elections in the United States, 1788-1990 (ICPSR 7757) are derived from CANDIDATE NAME AND CONSTITUENCY TOTALS, 1788-1990 (ICPSR 0002). They consist of returns for two-thirds of all elections from 1788 to 1823 to the offices of president, governor, and United States representative, and over 90 percent of all elections to those offices since 1824. They also include information on United States Senate elections since 1912. Returns for one additional statewide office are included beginning with the 1968 election. This file provides a set of derived measures describing the vote totals for candidates and the pattern of contest in each constituency. These measures include the total number of votes cast for all candidates in the election, each candidate's percentage of the vote received, and several measures of the relative performance of each candidate. They are appended to the individual candidate records and permit extensive analysis of electoral contests over time. This dataset contains returns for all parties and candidates (as well as scattering vote) for general elections and special elections, including information on elections for which returns were available only at the constituency level. Included in this edition are data from the District of Columbia election for United States senator and United States representative. The offices of two senators and one representative were created by the "District of Columbia Statehood Constitutional Convention Initiative," which was approved by District voters in 1980. Elections for these offices were postponed until the 1990 general election. The three offices are currently local District positions, which will turn into federal offices if the District becomes a state.

DATA COLLECTION NOTES:
(1) Help choosing data files and variables - The SSDC staff has prepared additional documentation that contains variable lists, variable codes and notes about variable names and values for these data collections.

(2) County-level election returns for the years 1974-1990 for the offices of president, governor, United States senator and representative, plus one additional statewide office in each state, can be routinely supplied in two formats. They are available either as one physical file per state (the normal mode of storing and supplying returns for elections prior to 1974), or as a single national file for each year containing all counties in the United States and the votes cast for each party contesting elections anywhere in the nation. It is possible for ICPSR to perform, at the detailed instruction of scholars, operations such as converting vote counts to percentages and combining vote figures for various parties in the files for 1974-1990, which will facilitate national-level analysis of these returns. Potential users of the 1974-1990 files of election data are encouraged to contact the ICPSR User Support staff to formulate specific requests for electoral returns available in this format.

(3) SAS and SPSS data definition statements are not available for all data files.

(4) Users should note that there are no data for the years 1973, 1975, 1977, and 1979, and that data for 1989 is forthcoming.

(5) The information provided in the codebook for ICPSR 0002 further documents the data in ICPSR 0001, 0013 and 0079. A listing of political party codes used in all data files is contained in this codebook.

EXTENT OF COLLECTION: documentation + data dictionaries + data definition statements + data files.

• CODEBOOKS: There are ASCII text codebooks for the 1988 and 1990 national data files.

• OSIRIS/ASCII DATA DICTIONARIES: These files are ASCII conversions of the OSIRIS EBCDIC Data Dictionaries and describe the ASCII data file. Each record in the Dictionary has 80 characters followed by a line feed character. You can browse this file to find information about data file variables and their column locations. The Dictionary can be read with standard statistical software, if desired. The OSIRIS/ASCII DATA DICTIONARY CODEBOOK gives you the record layout of these dictionaries.
• SAS AND SPSS DATA DEFINITION STATEMENTS: These text files can read the ASCII data file into statistical analysis software. Users can edit these syntax files to meet their specific requirements. Users are also advised to check the statements to make sure that they are compatible with their software installations, and if they are not, to make the appropriate changes.
• DATA FILES: This study has 15 data files.
• FILE FORMAT = Rectangular ASCII
• NUMBER OF RECORDS = Varies, see file list
• RECORD DELIMITER = Line Feed
• RECORD LENGTH = Varies, see file list

RESTRICTIONS: All users of these data should acknowledge ICPSR assistance.

RELATED COMPUTER FILES: Publications related to these data files.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATION: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. GENERAL ELECTION DATA FOR THE UNITED STATES, 1950-1990 [Computer file]. ICPSR ed. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1995.