Parties, Factions, and Incumbency in State and Federal Elections, 1870 to 2000

对美国联邦选举的广泛研究加深了对代表制政治的理解。对总统和国会选举的实证分析有助于政党投票和政党结盟、经济投票、个人主义政治以及公共政策对选举结果的反应等理论的发展。联邦选举的公开数据极大地促进了围绕代表性研究的研究项目。这个项目是收集1870年至今的州立法机构和州行政官员选举结果的数据。总督选举的普选数据可在现有的数据集中找到。但是，关于州立法选举的公开数据只有1968-1988年和1993-1994年期间的数据，除了州长以外，没有关于全州选举官员的综合数据库。一个公开的州选举数据库将对研究美国政治和代表性的学者广泛有用。这些数据将使学者们能够考虑投票模式在不同经济、社会和法律背景下的差异，并衡量经济的短期波动、人口结构的长期变化和不断变化的选举法如何影响选举结果。这些数据还将使研究人员能够将选举结果与政策结果联系起来。研究人员收集这些数据的兴趣是为了更好地理解政党投票和州政党分裂、在职优势和选举责任。全面的州选举数据将有助于改进州和县一级政党竞争的衡量标准。具体来说，在一个县或州的一次选举中观察到许多办公室，就有可能估计出一个县或州内正常的政党划分。衡量州一级的正常投票有很多用途，例如：为了研究政党联盟的变化，为了检验选举竞争和参与之间的联系，为了检验关于公共政策的选举响应性的猜想，例如Key（1949）的假设，即较少的选举竞争导致有利于富裕选民和利益的政策。研究人员专注于比较国家和州的政党分裂，测试关于这些分裂何时以及为什么不同的假设，并将这些差异与政党与个人投票的强度联系起来。州选举数据也为确定在任优势的来源提供了独特的机会，这些数据将对许多对该主题感兴趣的其他学者有价值。

Extensive study of U.S. federal elections has deepened understanding of the politics of representation. Empirical analysis of presidential and congressional elections has aided in the development of theories of party voting and party alignments, economic voting, personalistic politics, and the responsiveness of public policy to election outcomes. Publicly available data on federal elections has greatly facilitated the research programs surrounding the study of representation. This project is to assemble data on election returns for state legislatures and state executives for the period 1870 to present. General election data for gubernatorial elections are available in existing data sets. However, publicly available data on state legislative elections are only available for the period 1968-1988 and 1993-1994, and no comprehensive database on statewide elective officers other than governor exists. A publicly available state elections data base will be broadly useful to scholars of American politics and representation. These data will allow scholars to consider how voting patterns differ across varying economic, social, and legal contexts and to measure how short-run fluctuations in the economy, long-run shifts in demographics, and changing election laws affect election outcomes. These data will also allow researchers to relate election results to policy outcomes. The researchers' interests in collecting these data are to better understand party voting and state party cleavages, incumbency advantages, and electoral accountability. Comprehensive state election data will allow for improved measures of party competition at the state and county level. Specifically, with many offices observed at a give election within a county or state it is possible to estimate the normal party division within a county or state. Measures of the normal vote at the state level are used for many purposes-e.g., to study the changing party alignments, to examine the connection between electoral competition and participation, and to test conjectures about the electoral responsiveness of public policy, such as Key's (1949) hypothesis that less electoral competition leads to policies that benefit wealthier voters and interests. The researchers focus on comparing national and state party cleavages, testing hypotheses about when and why these cleavages differ, and relating these differences to the strength of party vs. personal voting. State election data also provide unique opportunities for determining the sources of incumbency advantagesThese data will be of value to numerous other scholars interested in the topic.