U.S. State Partisan Balance and Election Variables, 1937-2011

1937 to 2011 data on U.S. state partisan composition, including counts and percentages of Democratic and Republican legislators, party control of legislatures and governorships, and election cycle variables. The dataset was constructed by Carl Klarner and is associated with Harvard University Press. It includes measures of party control of state institutions and variables indicating the percentage of legislators up for election and gubernatorial election years.

Use Cases

• Modeling state policy outcomes based on party control of legislatures and governorships.
• Analyzing historical trends in partisan balance using percentages of Democratic and Republican legislators.
• Studying the impact of election cycles on legislative composition using variables for legislators up for election.
• Forecasting shifts in state institutional control based on historical party control measures.

Strengths

• Covers a 74-year time range from 1937 to 2011.
• Includes multiple measures of party control, such as counts, percentages, and institutional control.
• Contains election-specific variables like gubernatorial election years and legislator election cycles.

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

Carl Klarner, Harvard University Press

Collection Method

Constructed from primary sources; documentation on coding is referenced in 'Source Files'.

Time Range

1937 to 2011

Freshness

Last updated is unknown.

Geography

United States (state-level)