Welcome to the Voting and Elections Collection.
Find top-quality reference narratives and documents on elections, parties, voter behavior, and campaigns. Extract election results by meaningful characteristics: candidate, office, locality, and race type over time. Access U.S. election results across states with great historical depth and accuracy.
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1 2 3Something Different: California Primaries in Action
In an overwhelming majority of congressional districts across the country this fall, a Democrat will be paired against a Republican. But that is less apt to be the case in California, where the state’s unique “top two” primary advances the first and second-place finishers, regardless of party, to the general election. The result in 2012: A dozen of California’s 53 U.S. House districts (or 23%) had a general election pairing other than Democrat versus Republican.
Source: Rhodes-Cook Letter, April 2014
How to: Users of the Voting & Elections Collection can find all primary and general elections data under the “Election Results” tab at the top of each page. In cases where two members of the same party ran against one another in the general election, you will find one of the candidates listed in the “Highest Other” column along with their party affiliation.
Political Terrain for the 2014 Senate and Gubernatorial Races
Each party has their targets of opportunity this year - Republicans in the Senate, Democrats in the governorships. At least that is the case in terms of political terrain, as measured by the 2012 presidential vote. Democrats must defend seven Senate seats in 2014 in states won two years ago by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, while Republicans have only one senator up in a state carried by Democrat Barack Obama. However, on the gubernatorial side, the picture is basically reversed. Nine GOP gubernatorial chairs are up this year in Obama states, compared to just one Democratic governorship in a Romney state. The big difference between the two categories is that the vast majority of Romney-state Democratic Senate seats are in jurisdictions that are strongly Republican (voting for Romney by at least 10 percentage points), while most Obama-state GOP governors are in more competitive jurisdictions (favoring Obama in 2012 by less than 10 points).
Source: Rhodes-Cook Letter, April 2014
Key Resources: For more information on the key elections of 2012, read Chuck McCutcheon’s coverage of the most important elections of that year at the state and federal level.
Special Election Results in Sync with Political Terrain
Nearly all of the special House elections in the 2013-14 election cycle have taken place in districts that are safe Democrat or safe Republican, with the succession of landslide results in line with what one would expect. The one exception was the contest held in the lone swing district, the Florida 13th. It produced the only close outcome of this special election season, with Republican David Jolly defeating Democrat Alex Sink by a margin of 2 percentage points. President Barack Obama had carried the district by just 1 point in 2012 at the same time that veteran Republican Rep. C.W. Bill Young was handily winning reelection.
Source: Rhodes-Cook Letter, April 2014
How to: While users of the Voting & Elections Collection will find most election data under the “Election Results” tab at the top of site, special elections are treated a little differently. To access that data, click on the “Compare Data” tab and scroll down to “Special elections” (or simply click here). From there, simply input a year range or a Congress and an office type for results. The subsequent list will allow you to find the results of a particular special election.
