American Politics

Includes 150 in-depth tables, charts, and figures comparing all 56 states, commonwealths, and territories of the US on all branches of state government, policies, administration, elections, finance, and federal-state relations. Online in PDF 1982-present. We also have in print back to 1935. Used to be online with Excel tables for many recent years; some are still available via the Internet Archive.

This handy tool by Carl Klarner provides a simple csv or Stata file for merging to your data to easily assign Census county FIPS codes to variously presented county names. County names collected from various sources, such as election returns, frequently present county names in a variety of ways and often have misspellings. This will make the process much easier. There are roughly 3000 counties, and this tool provides more than 70,000 variations for matching.

Compiled by Carl Klarner. Data by state for personal income, disposable income, gross state product, unemployment, and state government finance (including revenue, multiple tax categories, expenditures, budget surplus / deficit, and debt). Data in tab delimited format. Includes annual and quarterly data; temporal coverage varies, 1929-2015.

Top 10%, Top 5%, Top 1%, Top 0.5%, Top 0.1% and Top 0.01% annual income share measures by state constructed from individual tax filing data available from the Internal Revenue Service. Compiled by Mark Frank. Data in Excel and Stata.

Dataset compiled by John Voorheis from the American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey covering states (1977-2012) and MSAs (1968-2012). Includes the Gini Coefficient and the Theil index as well as income ratios (90-10, 99-median), and Lorenz ordinates (including the top 1% share). Data in .csv and R.

Examinex how the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent in each state have fared over the years 1917–2015 and provides a snapshot of top incomes by county and metropolitan area, 2010-2015.

Age, sex, and race breakdowns, annually, for all United States counties from 1969 on. NBER took the National Cancer Institute files and put them in SAS, Stata, and CSV forms.

Health and Human Services (HHS) dataset that collects a wide range of annual health-related but also demographic and economic variables from government sources at the state and county level in the United States. Many variables go back to 2000 or earlier.

Annotated list of databases created by various state agencies, maintained by the Government Documents Round Table of the American Library Association.

State Blue Books, or legislative manuals, are useful compilations of statistics and information about states and state government. In addition to this list of current blue books, Firestone has long historical runs of many state manuals. Our most recent print editions are in the Trustee Reading Room; older editions are in the stacks or ReCAP.

Related guide with links to tax and government finance sources

Multiple series of budgetary reports on the 50 states: Budget Processes in the States, State Expenditure Report, and Fiscal Survey of the States. 1980s-present.

Compilation by Ballotpedia of both official and unofficial transparency websites for state budgets and spending.

A meta-dataset project that aggregates numerous other datasets related to state policy making (including several on this page). Includes more than nine-hundred variables, with observations across the 50 states (across the period 1900 – 2016). These variables represent policy outputs or political, social, or economic factors that may influence policy differences across the states. Data in Excel, .csv, and Stata formats as well as an R package.

An ongoing research project and data compendium that provides data in Excel format on myriad public policies (more than 200 in all) for all 50 states. Codebook provides information on how to use these data to construct indices of policy ideology. The data are available biennially 2000-2020 (although some policies are available back to the 1930s or 50s).

Data from Caughey and Warshaw's 2016 AJPS article. Data on 148 policies covering a variety of issue areas (economic, social, and racial) collected over eight decades (1936–2014), producing the first yearly measure of the policy liberalism of U.S. states to allow the study of policy change. Data on policies and state policy liberalism scores in .csv format.

Project of Temple University monitoring health laws in each of the fifty states. “Health” is defined broadly and includes topics such as abortion, recreational marijuana, fair housing protections, minimum wage laws, cell phone use while driving, state pre-emption, etc. There are associated maps, reports, and coded datasets of laws/regulations (in Excel) for each topic.

Census Bureau data from multiple surveys covering subnational governmental organization and powers, government employment and payroll, state and local government finances and public pensions, and tax revenues, 1992–present. Data from earlier surveys is available through ICPSR series 5 and series 12.

Census Bureau bulk data files from various surveys of state and local government (see descriptions above). Also includes Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR) data on the geographic distribution of federal spending (1983-2010). Most cover multiple decades to around 2008.

Data from surveys conducted by the International City/County Management Association. Survey topics include service provision & delivery, economic development, government structure, technology, labor-management relations, and e-government. ICMA’s database of local governments includes all U.S. cities, towns, townships, villages, and boroughs with a population of 2,500 or greater and all counties. Years vary; longitudinal data are available from surveys that are conducted on a regular schedule. Also see DSS Study No. 3029 for the Economic Development Full National and Regional Datasets -- 1999, 2004, 2009.

Index ranking the 50 states on their public policies affecting individual economic and social freedom. Data for 2001-11 available for download in Excel.

Database of economic development subsidies and other forms of government financial assistance to business primarily at the state level (though includes some large cities and some federal). Data available in CSV or XML; dates vary, but generally mid-2000s to present.

Includes number and percent of state legislators who are Democrats and Republicans, party control of state legislatures and governor’s offices, and different measures of party control of state institutions for the years 1937 to 2011. Also includes variables that indicate what percentage of legislators are up for election in a year and whether there is a gubernatorial election. Data in Excel.

Current and historic party control of state legislatures and government compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Detailed figures for 2009-present; less detailed timelines for 1978-present.

This data collection provides information on the number of seats held by the major and minor parties in both houses of the state legislatures, as well as the party identification of the state's governor during the term of each legislature in the United States in the period 1834-1985. Data are presented annually and biennially for every legislature.

STATA and Excel files contain variables representing 1) the Ranney Index (measuring partisan control of state government) for 1940-2010 period and 2) the Holbrook and Van Dunk index (measuring the overall competitiveness of individual state legislative elections) for 1970-2010. Two, four, six, eight, and ten year moving averages computed. See Shufeldt and Flavin 2012 for details on the measures.

Updated dynamic estimates of the political liberalism/conservatism (ideology) of the policies and mass publics in each state from 1936-2020 based on AJPS and APSR articles of Warshaw and Caughey.

Provides estimates of the ideology (political liberalism/conservatism) of states, congressional districts, state legislative districts, counties, cities, townships, school districts, and Zip Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) across three time periods: 2006-2011, 2012-2016, 2017-2021. Using responses to survey questions by more than 1 million Americans from the Cooperative Election Studies and the UCLA/Nationscape Surveys, Warshaw and Tausanovitch estimate individual ideology ideal points and aggregate those to different geographies using an MRP model. First, each individual’s policy preferences are estimated as a function of the individual's demographics (race, gender, and education) and geographic location. Then, estimates for each respondent demographic-geographic type are weighted by the proportion of each group in the actual populations and summed. The datasets also include estimates of presidential vote for each geography. Data in tab delimited format.

Measures of the ideology of individual state legislators and annual scores for legislative chambers on a liberal-conservative continuum (-2 most liberal to +2 most conservative). Scores are based on roll call voting data in the state legislatures and a recurring survey of state legislative candidates to enable comparisons of ideology and polarization across time, chambers, and states as well as with the U.S. Congress. Data in Stata; 1993-2020.

Annual state-level measures of the average location of a state's voters and elected officials on a liberal-conservative continuum (0 most conservative, 100 most liberal), based on interest group ratings of roll call votes by state congressional delegations, the outcomes of congressional elections, the partisan division of state government, and assumptions about state legislators and voters. Data in Stata and Excel, 1960-2017.

Estimates annual state-level measures of the public's policy mood (a measure of support for more or less government) and partisanship from 1956 to 2010 and state-level political ideology from 1976 to 2010 using pooled responses from over 500 surveys and 740,000 respondents.

Project by Daniel Coffey collecting state party platforms and coding based on a taxonomy of issue codes. Data on the site covers 2010-12, but 2000-2016 available upon request. Data in Excel.

Bulk download of bills and legislative tracking information for Congress and the 50 states. Requires free registration. Downloads in JSON, XML, and CSV. Generally, late 2000s-present.

Open project scrapes data from official websites of the 50 states (plus D.C. and Puerto Rico) to provide bill tracking, legislation, voting on legislation, sponsorship, contact info, and hearings and other event details. Data available via free API or for bulk download in CSV or JSON; 2017-present.

The National Conference of State Legislatures provides databases on a variety of topics—campaign finance, education, elections, immigration, transportation, economic development, the environment, and more—for tracking state legislation (bills and enacted laws) across the 50 states. Search by subtopics, year, status (e.g., pending, enacted, to governor, etc.) or enter keywords to identify bills.

Allows users to make basic state-by-state comparisons of state laws on a variety of major topics, comparing major provisions as they existed in 2005, 2008, 2015, 2019, and 2022. The database is updated regularly as new laws are passed or as legislation changes. Also provides access to digitized versions of previous print eds. (1993, 1997, 1999, 2003).

Massive annotated bibliography of thousands of articles, books, government documents, looseleaf services, court opinions, and websites that compare state laws across 3,500+ subjects. Many of the linked documents are available on HeinOnline. 1960-present.

Contains all U.S. state ballot measures attempted from 1902– 2016 compiled directly from the National Conference of State Legislatures’ (NCSL) “Ballot Measures Database” (see NCSL's up-to-date database). The database includes all types of ballot measures (e.g., legislative referendum, initiative, popular referendum), type of election (e.g., general, primary, special), whether a measure passed or failed, the percentage yes votes for the measure, and the category of topic area (as coded by NCSL). Data in Excel, .csv, and Stata formats.

Detailed coverage of individual ballot measures grouped by topic, state, and year, providing info on supporters and opponents, their arguments, campaign finance, lawsuits, and lots of additional context.

The Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C. hosts this collection of links to official state legislative information sites.

Large dataset of U.S. local government public meeting videos uploaded to YouTube. Includes nearly 140,000 videos (with complete transcripts) from more than 1000 localities and nearly 3000 distinct governments, 2006–2022. Data in multiple formats (R, JSON, CSV, Parquet, Stata) and includes geographic details (FIPS code, some merged Census demographics), video metadata, government type, channel type, and caption text. Audio/video files can be downloaded via YouTube API using video ID. See accompanying paper for more details.

CRL and LLMC Digital digitized the complete collection of state legislative journals (more than 8000 volumes) from all 50 states. For most states, the coverage starts in the early to mid-nineteenth century and ends in the late twentieth century.

LID draws on more than 500,000 state bills (collected by the Sunlight Foundation) and 2,400 pieces of model legislation written by lobbyists, searches for similarities, and flags them for review. LID users can then investigate the matches to look for possible lobbyist and special interest influence. Separate datasets comparing bills to bills and bills to model legislation available in .csv and JSON format. Dates vary, but typically 2011–mid-2015

Searchable database of the texts of the state constitutions of the United States. There have been almost 150 state constitutions, they have been amended roughly 12,000 times, and the text of the constitutions and their amendments comprises about 15,000 pages of text. Constitutional texts can be reconstructed at any point in time, using the "as of" search method. Full coded texts can be downloaded in .txt format. 1776-2000.

Roll call voting data from the California Assembly and Senate. Zip archives are provided for each two-year session. Each zip file contains two files: 1) a matrix of all votes cast by every member of both chambers in committee and on the floor; 2) a tab separated file describing the location, sponsor, content, and outcome of each vote taken. Includes an R file for manipulating the data.

See this guide by our Law Librarian for other sources to find U.S. statutes at the federal and state level, including historical.

An index of state legislatures and online legislative history research guides from Indiana University Bloomington Library.

Directory information on state legislators and executives, 2005-present (1 year lag) and county/municipal officials 2011-present (1 year lag). Includes committee assignments, biographical information, staff, and more from KnowWho. Each year is a zipped excel file with multiple tables linked by unique person IDs.

Non-profit research campaign that collects data on the race and gender of federal, state, and local candidates and elected officials, including legislators, prosecutors, and sheriffs. 2012-2020. Data in Excel.

Compiled by Carl Klarner. Contains names of governors, whether gubernatorial elections were held, tenure and term limits of governors, whether a budget was passed in a year, personal characteristics of governors (gender, whether they served in the state legislator or Congress), and more. Data in Excel; covers 1960-2010 (back to 1936 for some variables).

Contains the governor of every state or territory from 1775 to 2020. Political party is included (this variable may have multiple values for a single governor). For parties in years 1950-2018, some party names have been standardized. All data comes from the National Governors Association website. Data in .csv, R, and Stata formats.

Research center at Rutgers providing scholarly research and current data about American women’s participation in politics and public life, including figures on turnout, candidate recruitment, women of color, and public office holders (federal, state, and local). Data are located in the "Facts" section.

Contains aggregate data on gender and race/ethnicity of U.S. state legislators by state/year for 2005-2019, compiled from KnowWho directory data (see link above).

NCSL research on the demographics and backgrounds of state legislators from 2020 and 2015.

Aggregates more than 5000 polls at the state level measuring approval ratings for governors across all 50 states. Given the diversity of sources, responses are collapsed into % positive and negative. Data collected by Thad Beyle, Lee Sigelman, and Richard Niemi and now hosted by Jennifer Jensen as part of the U.S. Officials' Job Approval Ratings (JARs) Database; in .xls format.

The Directory includes the names and addresses of the nation’s Latino elected officials; their geographic distribution; the levels of government they represent; and their political affiliation. Data in Excel; 2005-present.

Directory of county and some city election officials with website, phone, fax, email, and mailing address compiled by the U.S. Vote Foundation. Also provides statewide voter information (eligibility and ID requirements, dates, registration info, state elections websites, etc.). For a similar list of local election officials for all counties in a table format, see the Federal Voting Assistance Program's Local Election Office Directory.

Lists current state legislative and other elected officials. Includes contact info, biographical attributes, key votes, interest group ratings, policy positions, speeches/press releases, and funding.