Election-Campaign Law

Presidential election results by CD

By Paul Gronke

I just came across a posting on the “Swing State Project” that includes the presidential election results by congressional district, freely downloadable.  The website is here http://www.swingstateproject.com/
and the full dataset is here http://www.swingstateproject.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4161

Most of our readers may not realize that election results are not typically released by congressional district.  They are not–it requires fairly careful mapping of precinct level results into the CD.  SSP seems to have accomplished this completely through volunteer efforts.

It’s quite an accomplishment, and something that will undermine the business model of some of the data gurus who hang around Washington, DC, including some of my personal friends.  On the other hand, those of us who have studied congressional elections in the past have had to put up with requests for these data for a long time (Gary Jacobson reading out there?).

What I wonder is whether these sorts of data projects, as innovative as they are, are sustainable in the long term.  There is still no archive of election results data that I am aware of, where voter registration, voter returns, and geographic mappings like those available at swingstate are collected, archived, documented, and maintained.

Full post as published by Election Updates on March 23, 2009 (boomark / email).