LibGuides: Data: Politics, Polling &amp; International Relations Data

Campaigns & Elections

America Votes
Voting statistics for national and statewide elections, 1956 to the present.

Election Returns at ICPSR
OpenSecrets
After free registration and approval, you can download bulk data on campaign finance, lobbying expenditures, 527 groups, and the personal finances of politicians. A project of the Center for Responsive Politics.
Federal Election Commission Campaign Finance Data
Detailed, individual-level data on which people donated money to which candidates.
American Local Government Elections Database
Data on over 75,000 candidates who ran in municipal elections in the United States between 1989 and 2021.
Vital Statistics on Congress
Produced by the Brookings Institution. Dozens of CSV and XLSX files with time series data for just about anything you might want to know about Congress and the people who have served there. Most data is mid-20th century to present.

Peace & Conflict

NAVCO (Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes) Data Project
This project produces aggregate-level data on resistance campaigns from 1900–2006 (NAVCO 1.1), annual data on campaign behavior from 1945–2006 (NAVCO 2.0), and events data on tactical selection during campaigns from 1987–2011 (NAVCO 3.0).
Uppsala Conflict Data Program
Several datasets on armed conflict, 1946–present. Some datasets are georeferenced.
International Conflict Research
Produced by the Center for Comparative and International Studies at ETH Zurich. Contains two major datasets: Geographic Research on War, Unified Platform (GROWup) and the Ethnic Power Relations Datasets.
Paul Hensel's International Relations Data Site
Maintained by a professor of political science who says, "These pages are meant to include the most useful data sources on processes of international conflict and cooperation, as well as data covering international economic, environmental, political, and social data and data on similar topics for the United States."
SIPRI: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Data on the weapons industry, arms transfers (1950–present), multilateral peacekeeping operations (2000–present), and military spending (1988–present).

Policy & Governance

QuantGov
Data about U.S. federal and state regulations, created by using text-mining and topic-modeling techniques on the Code of Federal Regulations and the administrative laws of each of the 50 states.
Supreme Court Database
Several datasets on cases heard before the Supreme Court of the United States, 1946–present (with a lag of 1–2 years). Datasets are available in Excel, Stata, SPSS, and SAS formats.
Worldwide Governance Indicators
1996–present. Produced by the World Bank.
Congressional Bills Project
1947 to the most recently concluded session of Congress. Downloadable data files with information about bills introduced into Congress, formatted for quantitative analysis.
Comparative Agendas Project
1940s–present. Coded datasets of policy changes for 22 countries, two U.S. states, and the European Union. For the U.S., data is based on Congressional hearings, Congressional roll call votes, executive orders, State of the Union addresses, and more.
USASpending.gov
Extremely detailed data on spending by the U.S. federal government. Includes data on contracts, grants, loans, and "other financial assistance." Both microdata and aggregate data are available.
Migration Policy Institute Data Hub
Includes both U.S. and international statistics.
The @unitedstates Project
A Github organization with several dozen repositories of data and tools related to the U.S. federal government. Best coverage is of Congress, although there is some executive branch and judicial branch coverage as well.

Polling

Roper iPoll This link opens in a new window
Provided by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University, Roper iPoll is the largest collection of public opinion poll data with results from 1935 to the present. Roper iPoll contains nearly 800,000 questions and over 23,000 datasets from both U.S. and international polling firms. Surveys cover any number of topics including, social issues, politics, pop culture, international affairs, science, the environment, and much more. When available, results charts, demographic crosstabs and full datasets are provided for immediate download.
Polling the Nations This link opens in a new window
Compiles surveys conducted by hundreds of polling organizations in the United States and more than 80 other countries from 1986 to the present. Each of the records reports a question asked, the percentage of respondents who gave each answer, and some information about the sample and survey methodology. The raw data is NOT available from this source; for some surveys, you may be able to find raw data through ICPSR or another source.

Afrobarometer
The Afrobarometer describes itself as "a pan-African series of national public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, and society." The Afrobarometer covers 37 countries containing over three-quarters of the population of Africa. Some countries have time-series data going as far back as 1999.
AmericasBarometer
Public opinion polling for countries in North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean.
World Values Survey
More than 40 years of international surveys including questions about values and opinions on social and political issues. Includes countries from around the world, but fewer than half of all countries in the world participate.