U.S. Elections & Political Behavior

Time-series statistics on American elections, including:

• party competition, by region (1860–2010)
• popular vote and seats in House elections, by Party (1896–2010)
• divided government, by Congress (1861–2013)
• mean turnover in the House, by decade (1789–2010)
• incumbent re-election rates (1960–2010)
• losses by president's party in midterm elections (1862–2010)
• minority elected officials (various years)

Scroll to bottom of chapters for tables in Excel or .csv format. For tables that report only one or a small number of years, consult previous editions (available in print at Swem).

Time-series statistics on Congress, including congressional demographics, party competition, campaign finance, congressional committee data and productivity, and political polarization and voting alignments. Years vary. Tables available in Excel, PDF and .csv format.

Wikipedia table with links to each state's election division and official returns. Includes coverage dates for available returns.

Primary election returns from all Democratic and Republican primaries for the US House of Representatives for 1956-2010 at the Congressional District level. (Compiled from the America Votes series.) Also includes district-specific variables, as well as data about candidate backgrounds and gender for recent years.

ICPSR data collection of county-level electoral returns for all parties and candidates. Data are most complete from 1824 on. 1950–1990 are available as election year files; 1824–1950 are multi-year state files. (Also includes congressional and gubernatorial elections.)

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, 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.

Searchable collection of early American election returns, including U.S. Senate and House of Representatives elections. Narrow by state, year, office, jurisdiction, party, and election type. Full datasets for each state can also be downloaded.

Includes aggregated presidential general and primary election data at the state and county level, including voter turnout aggregated data at the county level. Some content is restricted to members only. Note: Democrats are represented in red and Republicans in blue contrary to the more recent practice.