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Description & Citation--Study No. 8611

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:8611
 
Title:Electoral Data for Counties in the United States: Presidential and Congressional Races, 1840-1972
 
Principal Investigator(s):Jerome M. Clubb, University of Michigan
 
  William H. Flanigan, University of Minnesota
 
  Nancy H. Zingale, College of St. Thomas
 
Funding Agency:National Science Foundation
 
Grant Number:GS-28913, GS-42717, GS-28911, GS-42730, and GS-42733
 
Bibliographic Citation:Clubb, Jerome M., William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale. ELECTORAL DATA FOR COUNTIES IN THE UNITED STATES: PRESIDENTIAL AND CONGRESSIONAL RACES, 1840-1972 [Computer file]. Compiled by Jerome M. Clubb, University of Michigan, William H. Flanigan, University of Minnesota, and Nancy H. Zingale, College of St. Thomas. ICPSR08611-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 2006-11-13.
 

Scope of Study

Summary:This collection contains county-level returns for elections to the United States presidency and to the United States House of Representatives for the years 1840 to 1972. The variables for the presidential vote include the percentages of ballots cast for major and "significant" minor party candidates (with residual votes collapsed into an "other" category), total numbers of votes for all candidates in an election, and estimates of voter turnout in the presidential elections. There are similar variables for the congressional vote except that returns are reported for parties and not for candidates. Congressional district numbers are also reported for each county for every election.
 
Subject Term(s):candidates, congressional elections, counties, districts, election returns, elections, legislative districts, political attitudes, political behavior, political parties, presidential elections, states (USA)
 
Geographic Coverage:United States
 
Time Period:1840 - 1972
 
Universe:Population of United States voters in presidential and congressional elections, 1840-1972.
 
Data Type:aggregate data
 
Data Collection Notes:(1) The variable V3 (COUNTY IDENTIFICATION NO) is not necessarily equivalent to the FIPS code for a given county. (2) Some of the data in this collection were compiled from ICPSR 0003. Since the time of this data collection's first release, ICPSR 0003 has been updated and is available as ICPSR 2896 (HISTORICAL, DEMOGRAPHIC, ECONOMIC, AND SOCIAL DATA: THE UNITED STATES, 1790-2000). Users of the current data collection should check ICPSR 2896 for specific information about updates that may affect the analysis of the data in this collection.
 

Methodology

Data Source:United States Historical Election Returns, 1788-1978 (ICPSR 0001)
 
  Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790-1970 (ICPSR 2896)
 

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:1987-01-12
 
Version History:The last update of this study occurred on 2006-11-13.
 
  2006-11-13 - The codebook has been updated to reflect revisions made to the processing notes, which now include an explanation for computing partisan and voter turnout percentages.
 
  2005-01-27 - A processor's note has been added to the codebook to explain an apparent discrepancy between the 'V3 -- COUNTY IDENTIFICATION NO' variable and FIPS, which are in fact independent of one another. Also, the codebook has been converted to PDF form.
 

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