U.S. Historical Election Returns at County Level, 1824-1968

County-level election returns for presidential, gubernatorial, senatorial, and congressional races in the United States from 1824 through 1968. The collection includes returns for over 1,000 party names and many unaffiliated candidates, covering over 90 percent of such elections. It was compiled by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term party performance based on returns for over 1,000 party names.
• Modeling county-level voting patterns for presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional elections.
• Studying the evolution of the two-party system based on returns for unaffiliated and write-in candidates.
• Comparing electoral outcomes between regular and special elections.

Strengths

• Covers over 90 percent of all relevant elections for a 144-year period (1824-1968).
• Includes returns for over 1,000 individual party names and many unaffiliated candidates.
• Provides data at the county level for four major office types: president, governor, senator, and representative.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research

Time Range

1824-1968

Geography

United States (state and county level)