History

Why does America vote as it does on Election Day? The mission of the American National Election Studies (ANES) is to inform explanations of election outcomes by providing data that support rich hypothesis testing, maximize methodological excellence, measure many variables, and promote comparisons across people, contexts, and time. The ANES serves this mission by providing researchers with a view of the political world through the eyes of ordinary citizens.

A leading source of scholarly research and current data about women’s political participation in the United States

This is the new platform for accessing recent Census Bureau data. FYI, the Census Bureau stopped releasing new data in American FactFinder (AFF) at the end of June 2019 and transitioned to data.census.gov for data releases formerly on AFF.

Browse data sets by topic, or search the data catalog. You can limit your results to geospatial data sets. Federal and non-federal (state, county, municipal, etc.) data sources are available.

General Social Survey (GSS) contains a standard 'core' of demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal questions, plus topics of special interest. Many of the core questions have remained unchanged since 1972 to facilitate time-trend studies as well as replication of earlier findings.

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) provides demographic and historical research using U.S. Census microdata. They do request that you "Use it for GOOD -- never for EVIL".

UN Data provides statistical time series for countries from around the world covering a wide range of economic and socio-demographic topics. It includes descriptions of the international sources and definitions used in compiling the data.

The DataBank is a compilation of a number of World Bank data products, the most significant one being World Development Indicators. It includes time series data from as early as 1960.