Voting and Elections Collection from CQ Press |

By Karen Okamoto

Screenshot of the homepage for the Voting & Collections database

As we approach the 2020 presidential election, we thought it would be timely to highlight the Voting and Elections Collection from CQ Press. This collection brings together data, analyses, and reference articles on American voters, political parties as well as past and recent races for Congress, the presidency and governorships. The collection draws upon several sources including census data, the Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 and a range of CQ/Sage publications such as the series America Votes and CQ’s Politics in America. The election data coverage begins as early as 1789 (for presidential elections) and includes data as recent as the 2018 midterm elections. The collection can help researchers answer and explore questions such as: Which candidates and Congressional seats have changed parties? How successful has a particular party been in my county over time? and Which third party candidates, such as members of the Green Party, have been elected?

The collection can be searched through different access points. You can enter keywords into the basic search bar on the homepage. To add more precision to your search select the Advanced Search option which provides additional filters. Overall, the collection is divided into three main sections. The browse

topics section includes election data and encyclopedia articles on issues such as voter rights, campaign finance and profiles of political parties. A second search tab is devoted to election results and includes filters for office, election type, region and year. The third search tab allows researchers to compare data, find candidates, search party affiliation changes, view landslide and close races, and find third party candidates. The collection also provides numerous maps for visualizing election results from different time periods (see image of the 2016 Presidential Popular Vote map).

Map of the United States showing the 2016 Presidential popular vote

The Voting and Elections Collection from CQ Press provides maps of election results dating from 1824-2016.

You can access the Voting and Elections Collection from our list of Political Science databases at www.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/databases/political-science. CQ also provides a short video introducing the Collection and its search features at https://tinyurl.com/CQvotingElectionsCollection.