PollsAndVotes Public Data Resources

Updated 2022-09-05

These are links to public data resources for polls and votes, plus census, GIS and software.

I put these here to help those new to polling and political analysis find professional quality data that they can download freely and analyze. For those in high school or college these can be the basis for learning and for building a portfolio of work for Twitter (the source of all knowledge) and for class projects and ultimately for job applications. The data here are also used professionally, but I assume the professionals and graduate students already know all these, though if they are helpful I’m pleased by that.

This is far from comprehensive. If you have suggested additions, or corrections, please ping me @PollsAndVotes

Software

Statistical: R is free, has a huge user community and is complex
Home: https://cran.r-project.org

RStudio provides a free IDE for R that is widely used and a lot of packages and support for R, including RMarkdown for publishing

Home: https://www.rstudio.com
IDE Download: https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/
See the Resources menu on homepage for much more including books and packages

GIS: For Mapmaking

I find R has most of the mapmaking tools I need in various packages. Among many resources see
https://geocompr.robinlovelace.net/adv-map.html
https://r-spatial.org/r/2018/10/25/ggplot2-sf.html

For great integration with Census data see
https://walker-data.com

For a pretty complete understanding of using and mapping census data see this excellent book by Kyle Walker that includes use of his tools for accessing the data as well as mapping it.

https://walker-data.com /census-r/index.htm l

But if you really need a full blown GIS system

QGIS Extremely capable, not to be learned in a weekend

https://www.qgis.org/en/site/

Tableau Public
A variety of analysis and display options

Home: https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/

SDA at Berkeley
Online analysis of many datasets

Home: https://sda.berkeley.edu

Polls:

American National Election Studies (ANES)
National election surveys since 1948

Home: https://electionstudies.org
Data: https://electionstudies.org/data-center/

CES (Previously CCES)
Very large political surveys since 2005

Home & Data: https://cces.gov.harvard.edu

Voter Study Group:
Includes the VOTER survey and the Nationscape survey

Home: https://www.voterstudygroup.org
Data: https://www.voterstudygroup.org/data

Pew
Many, many surveys. Recent ones delayed several months.

Home: https://www.pewresearch.org
Data: https://www.pewresearch.org/tools-and-resources/

General Social Survey (GSS)
Huge variety of social topics since 1972

Home: https://gss.norc.org
Data: https://gss.norc.org/Get-The-Data

NORC
One of the oldest polling organizations, currently doing AP polls
Allows download of raw survey data after a delay of about 6 months

Home: https://apnorc.org
Data: https://apnorc.org/download-data/

AP VoteCast is a huge survey pre-election and election day, alternative to exit polls
Data: https://apnorc.org/download-data/politics/?search=votecast&order-by=chronological

BYU Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy

Polls on an interesting variety of social and political topics
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/csed

Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Mostly surveys of US opinion on global affairs, but some domestic issues as well

Home: https://www.thechicagocouncil.org
Data: https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/research/lester-crown-center-us-foreign-policy/chicago-council-survey

PRRI: Public Religion Research Institute
Survey data released after 1 year

Home: https://www.prri.org
Data: https://www.prri.org/data-vault/

The ARDA: Association of Religion Data Archives
Includes survey data along with membership and other aggregate Data

Home: https://www.thearda.com
Data: https://www.thearda.com/Archive/browse.asp

AEI Survey Center on American Life
Data available after 6 months

Home: https://www.americansurveycenter.org
Data: https://www.americansurveycenter.org/data/download-data/

Votes

United States Elections Project
Michael McDonald research, lots on turnout and voting eligible population

Home: http://www.electproject.org

Harvard Dataverse
This can be a fantastic resource but it is huge and complex. Various projects archive their data here in a named “dataverse”. You can search for keywords to find things.

Here are examples of projects that have dataverses

MIT Data + Science Lab
Election returns at various levels and for several offices

Home: https://electionlab.mit.edu
Data: https://electionlab.mit.edu/data
Data: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/medsl

Voting and Election Science Team
Precinct returns for all states, 2012-2020

https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/electionscience
2020 National Precinct Level Vote Returns:
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/K7760H

OpenElections
A project to collect, clean and distribute official results since 2000, down to precinct
This is a project you can help on, from simple to complex. A great way to give back & to learn.

Home: http://openelections.net
Status page: http://openelections.net/news/
GitHub: https://github.com/openelections

ROAD: The Record of American Democracy
National precinct-level vote returns for the 1980s

Home: https://road.hmdc.harvard.edu
Data: https://road.hmdc.harvard.edu/data

State Legislative Election returns
Data and other files collected by Carl Klarner

Dataverse search: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/cklarner?

Data: State legislative returns 1967-2016
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/DRSACA

Census Data

IPUMS at University of Minnesota

This is the most wonderful, extremely complex, source of current and historical Census data, for all geographies down to the block level. Also offers current and historical GIS shape files. A significant learning curve but well worth it.

Home: https://www.ipums.org

IPUMS: NHGIS provides census tabular data and GIS boundary files from 1790. This is what most people think of as “Census data”
https://www.nhgis.org

IPUMS: CPS provides the individual level Current Population Surveys (monthly) which is the basis of unemployment statistics, annual demographic estimates, and special supplements including the Voter Supplement for registration and turnout every 2 years
https://cps.ipums.org/cps/

IPUMS USA The individual level micro-data from Census and American Community Surveys. Massive. Not for the faint of heart.
https://usa.ipums.org/usa/

Comparative Data Resources
(Not my specialty but this will get you started.)

Afrobarometer
Public opinion across Africa

Home: https://afrobarometer.org
Data: https://afrobarometer.org/data British Election Study

British Election Study

Many elections with both cross-section and panel designs

https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/data/

CLEA: Constituency-Level Elections Archive
Election returns from around the world

Home: https://electiondataarchive.org
Data: https://electiondataarchive.org/data-and-documentation/
GeoReferenced Districts: https://electiondataarchive.org/data-and-documentation/georeferenced-electoral-districts-datasets/

Eurobarometer
Long-running and frequent surveys of the EU

Home: https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/screen/home
Data: https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/browse/all

LAPOP: AmericasBarometer
34 nations including all of North, Central, and South America