Telegraph Network Expansion and Voter Turnout in America 1840-1852

A source of replication data for a study on the impact of the electric telegraph on national elections in America from 1840 to 1852. It contains newly digitized data on the telegraph network's growth, used in a difference-in-differences analysis to measure effects on voter turnout and newspaper content.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between telegraph network expansion and changes in voter turnout in national elections.
• Perform text analysis on historical newspaper content to measure changes in coverage of Congress, the presidency, and sectional divisions.
• Study the dissemination of national news from Washington to local areas via newspapers facilitated by telegraph access.
• Examine the geographic and temporal patterns of telegraph network growth across America during the 1840-1852 period.

Strengths

• Data is linked to a peer-reviewed publication in the Journal of Economic History (2025).
• Covers a specific and historically significant 12-year period from 1840 to 1852.
• Includes data for a difference-in-differences research design to estimate causal impacts.

Limitations

• The specific data structure, column names, row count, and file formats are not provided in the input.
• The dataset's size and completeness for independent replication are unknown.

Provenance

Source

ICPSR Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Newly digitized data on the growth of the telegraph network, as described in the associated research paper.

Time Range

1840 to 1852

Freshness

The dataset was last updated on February 23, 2026.

Geography

America (United States)