378,345 observations represent individual candidates in state legislative general elections across all 50 U.S. states from 1967 through 2016. The dataset was created and maintained by Carl Klarner, with extensive cleaning applied to returns from 1967 to 2010 and data for 2011 to 2016 added subsequently.
Use Cases
- Analyzing long-term party competition trends based on state legislative election returns.
- Modeling candidate-level electoral success based on historical election data.
- Studying geographic and temporal patterns in state legislative races across the United States.
Strengths
- 378,345 candidate-level observations provide a substantial sample for analysis.
- Covers a 50-year time span (1967-2016) across all 50 U.S. states.
- Data for 1967-2010 has been extensively cleaned, according to the description.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified beyond 2016.
Provenance
- Source
- Carl Klarner
- Time Range
- 1967-2016
- Geography
- All 50 U.S. states