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Description & Citation--Study No. 13

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:13
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR00013
 
Title:General Election Data for the United States, 1950-1990
 
Principal Investigator(s):Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
 
Series:United States Historical Election Returns Series
 
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. doi:10.3886/ICPSR00013
 

Scope of Study

Summary:This data collection 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.
 
Subject Term(s):congressional elections, county-level, election returns, elections, gubernatorial elections, historical data, political attitudes, political behavior, political parties, presidential elections, voting behavior
 
Geographic Coverage:United States
 
Time Period:1950 - 1990
 
Data Type:aggregate data
 
Data Collection Notes: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. SPSS data definition statements are available for Parts 10-14 and 16. SAS data definition statements (Part 17) are also available for Part 16, National, 1990 data. Users should note that there are no data for the years 1973, 1975, 1977, and 1979, and that data for 1989 is forthcoming.
 

Methodology

Data Source:official election returns provided by state governments
 

Access and Availability

Note:A list of the data formats available for this study can be found in the summary of holdings. Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.
 
Original ICPSR Release:1984-06-19
 
Dataset(s):
  • DS1: National, 1974
  • DS2: National, 1976
  • DS3: National, 1950-1972
  • DS4: National, 1974 and 1976
  • DS5: National, 1978
  • DS6: National, 1980
  • DS7: National, 1981
  • DS8: National, 1982
  • DS9: National, 1983
  • DS10: National, 1984
  • DS11: National, 1985
  • DS12: National, 1986
  • DS13: National, 1987
  • DS14: National, 1988
  • DS15: National, 1990
  • DS16: SAS Data Definition Statements for National, 1990 Data