Precinct-Level Election Returns

This is the MEDSL repository for precinct-level election returns. We periodically publish its contents to our Dataverse and website.

The 2016-precinct-* directories contain returns organized by office (as on Dataverse):

• U.S. President
• U.S. Senate
• U.S. House
• State offices
• Local offices

Returns by state are in the source directory. These are alternative partitions of the same data.

Coverage

Alabama: 2016

Added 2018-03-29.

• Party-line voting appears in the data as office values of Straight Party and candidate values of, for example, Alabama Republican Party. To calculate vote totals, sum the votes candidates' received on their own lines and from party-line voting.

Alaska: 2016

Added 2018-03-11.

• Because EAVS data are unavailable for Alaska, the county_ identifiers for county-equivalents are missing.

Arizona: 2016

Added 2018-05-09.

• Reporting counties were inconsistent in the use of accented characters. Candidate name spellings aren't entirely consistent.
• Returns from some counties do not yet give district values when office is State House or State Senate.

Arkansas: 2016

Added 2018-05-04.

• In the raw data, it seems that votes for unopposed candidates sometimes appear twice: once under a candidate's name and again in totals for all unopposed candidates. But these totals are slightly lower than the sum of votes for all unopposed candidates. We've dropped them.

California: 2016

Added 2018-04-09.

Colorado: 2016

Added 2018-03-11.

Connecticut: 2016

Added 2018-03-11.

Delaware: 2016

Added 2018-05-09.

District of Columbia: 2016

Added 2018-03-11.

• Returns for the Council and Advisory Referendum can be found in the state dataverse. Advisory Neighborhood Commission returns are in the local dataverse.

Florida: 2016

Added 2018-05-09.

Georgia: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

Hawaii: 2016

Added 2018-03-29.

• Kalawao County is the only county in Hawaii that doesn't appear as a jurisdiction or county_name; it doesn't administer elections.

Idaho: 2016

Added 2018-03-11.

• Idaho House and Senate returns were added 2018-06-12.

Illinois: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

• Illinois jurisdictions are counties, with the exception of these six cities: Aurora, Bloomington, Chicago, Danville, East St. Louis, Galesburg, and Rockford. We joined their returns with county_ identifiers by jurisdiction and precinct, using the jurisdiction given by the JurisContainerID variable in the source data.

Indiana: 2016

Added 2018-06-05.

• Candidate names for lower office are not always consistent across counties.

Iowa: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

Kansas: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

Kentucky: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

Louisiana: 2016

Added 2018-03-11.

• No elections to the Louisiana House or Senate were held in 2016.

Maine: 2016

Added 2018-05-09.

• County identifiers aren't yet available for all jurisdictions.

Maryland: 2016

Added 2018-06-04.

Massachusetts: 2016

Added 2018-03-29.

Michigan: 2016

Added 2018-04-09.

• Note when aggregating over precinct the rows that represent "statistical adjustments."

Minnesota: 2016

Added 2018-03-29.

• Democratic candidate party values are left as Democratic-Farmer-Labor.

Mississippi: 2016

Added 2018-05-09.

• In the current release, values of district are missing where office is State House.

Missouri: 2016

Added 2018-05-10.

• County identifiers are unavailable for Kansas City returns, which are reported by the municipality. (The associated Census Place FIPS is 2938000.) In the future we may include sub-county and place identifiers.

Montana: 2016

Added 2018-05-10.

Nebraska: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

• There are no returns for local races.
• Nebraska Legislature returns appear with an office value of State Senate.

Nevada: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

• Some jurisdictions suppressed returns from low-turnout precincts to preserve ballot secrecy. Details forthcoming.

New Hampshire: 2016

Added 2018-05-10.

• State legislative returns are post-recount, and added 2018-06-12.

New Jersey: 2016

Added 2018-06-04.

• Candidate names for lower office are not always consistent across counties.

New Mexico: 2016

Added 2018-03-11.

New York: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

• Candidate names for lower office are not always consistent across counties.

North Carolina: 2016

Added 2018-03-29.

North Dakota: 2016

Added 2018-03-11.

Ohio: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

Oklahoma: 2016

Added 2018-03-29.

• No general election was held for the first U.S. House district after Jim Bridenstine's opponent withdrew and left him unopposed.

Oregon: 2016

Added 2018-04-09.

Pennsylvania: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

Rhode Island: 2016

Added 2018-03-29.

South Carolina: 2016

Added 2018-03-29.

• Party-line voting appears in the data as office and candidate values of Straight ticket. Compute candidates' vote totals as the sum of the votes they received on their own lines and from party-line voting.

South Dakota: 2016

Added 2018-04-09.

Tennessee: 2016

Added 2018-03-11.

• There are no returns for local races.

Texas: 2016

Added 2018-04-09.

• There are no returns for local races.
• Returns for uncontested races to the Texas House of Representatives do not appear in the data.

Utah: 2016

Added 2018-04-23.

Vermont: 2016

Added 2018-04-09.

Virginia: 2016

Added 2018-03-29.

Washington: 2016

Added 2018-04-09.

• King County results appear for now as county aggregates.

West Virginia: 2016

Added 2018-05-10.

• The data don't yet include write-in votes for president.

Wisconsin: 2016

Added 2018-03-29.

• Presidential returns are post-recount.

Wyoming: 2016

Added 2018-03-11.

Codebook

Datasets contain the following variables:

• year
• state
• state_postal
• state_fips
• state_icpsr
• county_name
• county_ansi
• county_fips
• county_lat
• county_long
• jurisdiction
• precinct
• office
• district
• stage
• special
• candidate
• candidate_last
• candidate_first
• candidate_middle
• candidate_normalized
• candidate_full
• candidate_suffix
• candidate_nickname
• candidate_fec
• candidate_fec_name
• candidate_google
• candidate_govtrack
• candidate_icpsr
• candidate_maplight
• candidate_opensecrets
• candidate_wikidata
• candidate_party
• writein
• party
• mode
• votes

year

Year of election.

state

State name.

state_postal

State U.S. Postal Service abbreviation (two-letter ISO 1366 code).

state_fips

Numeric state FIPS 5-2 code.

state_icpsr

Numeric ICPSR state code.

county_name

County name.

Source: Census Bureau National Counties Gazetteer File.

county_ansi

County ANSI code.

Source: Census Bureau National Counties Gazetteer File.

county_fips

Numeric FIPS 6-4 code, the concatenation of two-digit state_fips and three- digit county FIPS codes.

Source: Census Bureau National Counties Gazetteer File.

county_lat

County latitude (decimal degrees).

Source: Census Bureau National Counties Gazetteer File.

county_long

County longitude (decimal degrees).

Source: Census Bureau National Counties Gazetteer File.

jurisdiction

The name of the administrative jurisdiction, typically a county, as it appeared in source data.

Source: Precinct returns for jurisdiction.

precinct

The name of the precinct, as it appeared in source data.

Source: Precinct returns for jurisdiction.

office

The office for which the candidate ran.

Source: Precinct returns for jurisdiction.

district

District associated with the office, where applicable.

Source: Precinct returns for jurisdiction.

stage

The electoral stage, either gen for general elections or pri for primary elections.

special

Whether the election was a special election, either TRUE for special elections or FALSE otherwise.

Source: Precinct returns for jurisdiction.

candidate

The name of the candidate.

Candidate names are standardized across jurisdictions.

Source: Precinct returns for jurisdiction.

candidate_last

Candidate's last name.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_first

Candidate's first name.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_middle

Candidate's middle name.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_normalized

A normalizing transformation of the candidate's name for joins by name. This is a single word from candidate, usually the last name, in lowercase. In the case of hyphenated names, only the final name is included.

Source: MEDSL.

candidate_full

Candidate's official full name.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_suffix

Candidate name suffix.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_nickname

Candidate's nickname.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_fec

Candidate's FEC identifier. Multiple FEC IDs appear concatenated, separated by a semicolon and space (; ).

Source: The @unitedstates project and FEC.

candidate_fec_name

Candidate's name as it appears in FEC data.

Source: FEC.

candidate_google

Candidate's [Google Knowledge Graph](https://developers.google.com/knowledge- graph) entity identifier.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_govtrack

Candidate's GovTrack.us identifier.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_icpsr

Candidate's ICPSR identifier.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_maplight

Candidate's MapLight identifier.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_opensecrets

Candidate's OpenSecrets.org identifier.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_wikidata

Candidate's WikiData identifier.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

candidate_party

Candidate's party affiliation. Values may differ from party, which gives the candidate's party on the ballot.

Source: The @unitedstates project.

writein

Whether the record describes a write-in candidate, either TRUE or FALSE.

Source: Precinct returns for jurisdiction.

party

Party of the candidate, where applicable. Candidates may run on multiple party lines, so to compute two-party vote shares or candidate vote totals, aggregate over party.

Party names are standardized across jurisdictions.

Source: Precinct returns for jurisdiction.

mode

Vote mode, e.g., mail or Election Day.

Source: Precinct returns for jurisdiction.

votes

Number of votes received.

Source: Precinct returns for jurisdiction.