Candidate and Constituency Statistics of Elections in the United States, 1788-1990 (ICPSR 7757)

Version Date: Jun 5, 1995

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

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07757.v5

Version V5

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Summary

These data 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.

Citation

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Candidate and Constituency Statistics of Elections in the United States, 1788-1990 . Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1995-06-05. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07757.v5

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Funding

National Science Foundation (RO-5637-72-464), National Endowment for the Humanities

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

1788 -- 1990
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Universe

Candidates who ran for the offices of president, governor, and United States representative (1824-1990), United States senator (1912-1990), and one additional statewide office, usually attorney general or secretary of state (1968-1990).

Data Source

official election returns provided by state governments

Data Type(s)

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Original Release Date

1984-06-19

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Candidate and Constituency Statistics of Elections in the United States, 1788-1990 . ICPSR07757-v5. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1994. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07757.v5

1984-06-19 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.
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Notes