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Description & Citation--Study No. 7757

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:7757
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07757
 
Title:Candidate and Constituency Statistics of Elections in the United States, 1788-1990
 
Principal Investigator(s):Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
 
Funding Agency:National Science Foundation. National Endowment for the Humanities.
 
Grant Number:RO-5637-72-464
 
Bibliographic Citation:Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. CANDIDATE AND CONSTITUENCY STATISTICS OF ELECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1788-1990 [Computer file]. 5th ICPSR ed. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1994. doi:10.3886/ICPSR07757
 

Scope of Study

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.
 
Subject Term(s):candidates, constituency totals, constituents, election returns, elections, political parties, United States
 
Time Period:1788 - 1990
 
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 Type:aggregate data
 

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: Data File
  • DS2: SAS Data Definition Statements
 

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