U.S. State Government Party Control, 1834-1985

United States historical data on the partisan composition of state legislatures and the party affiliation of governors from 1834 to 1985. The collection provides annual and biennial records for each legislature. Data from 1834-1868 were collected by W. Dean Burnham of MIT, with subsequent years added by ICPSR staff.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term partisan control trends based on state legislative seat counts.
• Analyzing the relationship between gubernatorial and legislative party alignment based on party identification data.
• Studying the evolution of minor party representation in state governments based on seat counts.

Strengths

• Covers a 151-year time span (1834-1985) for longitudinal analysis.
• Includes data for both major and minor parties in state legislatures.
• Provides data for both legislative houses and the governor's office.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

W. Dean Burnham (MIT) and ICPSR staff.

Collection Method

Data collection and compilation for historical records.

Time Range

1834-1985

Geography

United States (state-level)