Referenda and Primary Election Materials (ICPSR 6)

Principal Investigator(s): Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research

Summary: This data collection contains election returns at the county and state levels from the mid-nineteenth century to the late twentieth century for primary and general elections on statewide referenda, constitutional amendments, state House/Senate joint resolutions, and initiated measures. The ballot language of each measure is also included. County-level returns for most gubernatorial, senatorial, and congressional primary elections from 1910 to the present are documented as well. (more info)

Series: Referenda and Primary Election Data [United States] Series

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Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. REFERENDA AND PRIMARY ELECTION MATERIALS. ICPSR ed. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1995. doi:10.3886/ICPSR00006.v1

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR00006.v1

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Summary:   This data collection contains election returns at the county and state levels from the mid-nineteenth century to the late twentieth century for primary and general elections on statewide referenda, constitutional amendments, state House/Senate joint resolutions, and initiated measures. The ballot language of each measure is also included. County-level returns for most gubernatorial, senatorial, and congressional primary elections from 1910 to the present are documented as well.

Subject Terms:   congressional elections (US House), congressional elections (US Senate), congressional voting, constitutional amendments, counties, election returns, gubernatorial elections, nineteenth century, political history, primaries, referendum, senatorial elections, states (USA), twentieth century, voting behavior

Geographic Coverage:   Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Data Types:   aggregate data

Data Collection Notes:

Most of the information for this collection is available ONLY in typed and photocopied form. The exception is statewide referenda data from 1968 to 1990, which ICPSR has converted into machine-readable form. Included in this portion of the collection are the county vote breakdowns for approximately 4,241 referenda voted upon in primary and general elections throughout the United States. A typed hardcopy codebook accompanies each state file. The primary election data are NOT available in machine-readable form. It is possible to supply, on a cost basis, limited portions of the referenda and primary election returns that are not machine-readable in the form of photocopies.

Data Source:

official election returns provided by state governments

Extent of Processing:  ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Performed consistency checks.
• Standardized missing values.
• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Original ICPSR Release:  1984-06-19

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