LibGuides: Political Science: Data and Statistics

United States data and statistics

American National Election Studies (ANES)
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.
Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP)
A leading source of scholarly research and current data about women’s political participation in the United States
data.census.gov
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.
data.gov
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)
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.

Historical Statistics of the United States
Contains over 37,000 data sets from 1790-2000, fully searchable and customizable. Retrieved tables can be downloaded as Excel or PDF files.

IPUMS USA
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".

ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States
An authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic conditions of the United States. Once provided free from the U.S. Census Bureau, now provided by ProQuest.
Social Explorer
Helps you visually analyze and understand demographic, election, health, environment and other data through the use of interactive maps and data reports.

Gallup Analytics
provides access to Gallup's U.S. Daily tracking and World Poll data - with data from countries that are home to more than 98% of the world's population. Polls cover topics such as economic conditions, government and business, health and well-being, infrastructure, and education. ACCESS NOTE: This database is restricted to one user at a time, if you find you do not have access, please try again later.
Gallup.com conducts public opinion polls on political, social, and economic issues.

Gallup Polls
Gallup Polls conducts public opinion polls on political, social, and economic issues.
Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center is a think tank that conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research.

Polling the Nations
A database of poll questions taken on a variety of subjects conducted from 1986 through the present in the United States and more than 100 other countries around the world.
iPoll Databank @ the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
Provides comprehensive, up-to-date source for U.S. nationwide public opinion from 1935 to present. Surveys archived in the Roper Catalog were originally gathered by academic, commercial and media survey organizations such as Gallup Organization, Harris Interactive, Pew Research Associates, and many more.

EIU Viewpoint
EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit) provides access to several EIU publications including Country Reports, Country Monitor, Country Commerce, Country Finance, and EIU ViewsWire. Information is presented as analysis, briefings, commentary, or forecasts.

UN Data
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.
World Bank DataBank
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.

Harvard Dataverse
Housed at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard. Claims to host the world's largest collection of social science research. It holds data from many researchers and institutions in addition to Harvard.

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) holds one of the world's largest collection of computer-readable social science data.

Need even more data sources? Check out these other guides: