CQ Voting and Elections Collection: Help

CQ Press Voting and Elections Collection

Help: Home Page

The CQ Voting and Elections Collection home page is the main entry screen into the Web site. It contains the standard navigation that you will find throughout the site, a Quick Search option, as well as the following search options:

Presidential Elections	Searches across the text and titles of all documents and election results indexed for a presidential elections topic, for example, biographies of presidents, electoral college, Presidential General Elections: By State.
Campaigns and Elections	Searches across the text and titles of all documents and data in the campaign and election process topics.
Congressional Elections	Searches across the text and titles of congressional election results, biographies of Congress members, and other related documents.
Political Parties	Searches across the text and titles of all documents relating to political parties.
Gubernatorial Elections	Searches across the text and titles of all documents relating to gubernatorial elections.
Voters and Demographics	Searches across the text and titles of all documents and data indexed for a voter and demographic topic, for example, voter turnout, census and district demographic data, voting rights.

Site Navigation

1. The top-right navigation bar contains links to general Web site functions or information.

Home	Links to the CQ Voting and Elections Collection home page.
About	Links to a description of the CQ Voting and Elections Collection and CQ Press.
FAQ/Help	Opens a new browser window containing help descriptions for the page that you are currently viewing.
Log Out	Logs you off the CQ Voting and Elections Collection site.

2. The left navigation bar contains links to specific areas of the Web site that may be accessed more easily.

Your Profile	Links to a page that allows you to create your own log-in for saving listings to your personalized Document History and Favorite Documents.
Document History	Links to a list of the last twenty-five documents visited in the CQ Voting and Elections Collection.
Favorite Documents	Links to a list of up to twenty-five documents saved to "Favorite Documents."
Saved Searches	Links to your list of saved searches.
Search	Links to the basic search screen.
Quick Search	Performs a search based on default search criteria.
Candidate and Office Histories	Links to a search page to search for information on individual candidates and vote total trends for all offices.
Seat Status and Competition	Links to a search page to follow incumbents, election outcomes by percentage of total vote, and open seat races.
Party Control, Split Districts, and Third Parties	Links to a search page to follow party control in the House, split districts for House and President, and third-party candidates.
Party Switches and Special Elections	Links to a search page to follow party switches and special elections.
Browse	Links to a browse tree of “Campaign and Election Process,” “Congressional Elections,” “Gubernatorial and Elections,” “Political Parties,” “Presidential Elections,” and “Voters and Demographics” topics and documents.
Maps	Links to an interactive maps of the United States that illustrate presidential, Senate, House, and gubernatorial election results.
Encyclopedia	Links to general summaries of election history and contemporary issues.
Calendar	Links to a page that lists dates for each state’s key events in the current campaign cycle.
Chronology	Links to a time line of major developments in congressional and presidential elections as well as the elections process.
Definitions and Sources	Links to a page of election terms and their definitions.
Web Links	Links to outside sources of information on voting and elections.
Export/Download	Links to a form to download or E-mail complete data sets for specific elections.

Quick Search Default Criteria

Quick Search skips the search page and immediately performs a search based on the following default criteria:

on the word or phrase entered in the Quick Search box
across all document text and titles
across all CQ Voting and Elections Collection topics
across all event dates
across all document types
results are sorted by relevancy
lists thirty results per page