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 3 4Elections Data Update
The 2018 primary and general election data publication schedule is now available. Learn more about how we collect and normalize elections data, and when it will be live in the collection.
Alabama Senate Win Propels Democrats Toward 2018
On December 12, 2017, the nation watched a potential backlash taking shape against the current anti-establishment mood. Alabama’s highly anticipated special Senate election pitted the scandal-ridden conservative candidate, Roy Moore, against the prevailing Democratic former prosecutor, Doug Jones. In his latest analysis, elections expert Rhodes Cook examines how Alabama elected its first Democratic U.S. senator since 1992.
2016 Election at a Glance
The night of Nov. 8 was a good time to be a Republican, as the party unexpectedly won both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and maintained their dominance at the state level. The presidential election, however, was a matter of controversy, as it ended in an Electoral College “misfire,” the second in 16 years. Republican Donald Trump handily won the electoral vote (and with it, the White House) but lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million. Meanwhile, the Democrats did score gains in both houses of Congress, but not nearly enough to win control of either the House or the Senate.
Source: The Rhodes Cook Letter, March 2017
Trump Dominates the Battleground States
The key to winning the White House is rather simple: Win most of the battleground states. Of the 11 most closely watched in 2016, Republican Donald Trump carried seven. This, after Barack Obama had swept all 11 in 2008 and all but North Carolina in 2012. Trump was able to upset Democrat Hillary Clinton by pulling six closely contested, two-time Obama states into the Republican column. The half dozen included Florida plus a swath of Frost Belt industrial states from Pennsylvania west to Iowa, with Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin in between. Trump’s victory in the six was an impressive political feat, since Florida, Iowa, and Ohio had not voted Republican in a presidential election since 2004, Michigan and Pennsylvania since 1988, and Wisconsin since 1984. There was also a considerable political payoff for Trump in the six states, as he moved 99 electoral votes from the Democratic column in 2012 to the GOP side in 2016. Add in the electoral vote that he won for carrying Maine’s largely rural 2nd District, and that accounted for the change in the Republican electoral vote from 206 in 2012 to 306 in November (before defections by “faithless” electors reduced Trump’s final total to 304).
Source: The Rhodes Cook Letter, March 2017
