Ideological Moderation and Success: U.S. Election Data 2020-2022

Michael Bailey (The Journal of Politics Dataverse) released this dataset covering U.S. House, Senate, and gubernatorial candidates from the 2020 and 2022 general elections. It provides original ideology estimates derived from candidate social media and campaign website text to analyze the relationship between ideological positioning and vote shares. The data enables comparisons of candidate performance within the same district across federal and state-level races.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the correlation between candidate ideology scores and vote shares in competitive gubernatorial races
• Comparing the electoral performance of moderate versus extreme candidates within the same district
• Evaluating ideological positioning differences across federal, state, legislative, and executive positions

Strengths

• Covers virtually all general election candidates for U.S. House, Senate, and gubernatorial races in 2020 and 2022
• Includes original ideology estimates based on natural language from social media and campaign websites
• Allows for within-district comparisons by leveraging simultaneous elections

Limitations

• Limited to two election cycles (2020 and 2022)
• Ideology estimates are based on public-facing campaign language which may differ from legislative behavior
• Geographic focus is restricted to the United States

Provenance

Source

Michael Bailey, The Journal of Politics Dataverse

Collection Method

Text analysis of social media and campaign websites combined with election result aggregation

Time Range

2020-2022

Freshness

Last updated March 2026.

Geography

United States