Charles Stewart's Congressional Data Page

 

The purpose of this page is to begin accumulating hyperlinks in one place to various sites around the country that house data relevant to studies of Congress, legislatures in general, and all the rest. My preference is to link to (more or less) ready-to-use data sites. Of course, no warranties are made, implied or explicit, about this data. Your mileage may vary.

The data to which this page points have been collected through the work of many, many dedicated people working many, many hours. Their being made available here is one provision of a public good. Please let the original data collectors know you're using their work. Also, please cite the data as the authors wish to be cited.

Jump to studies:  
Congressional Committees, 80th--102nd Congresses Garrison Nelson
Congressional Committees, Historical Standing Committees David Canon, Garrison Nelson, Charles Stewart III
Congressional Committees, Modern Standing Committees, 103rd--115th Congresses Charles Stewart III and Jonathan Woon
Candidate Quality and U.S. Senate Election Data David Lublin
Congressional District Demographic and Political Data David Lublin
Candidate Positioning Data Stephen Ansolabehere, James M. Snyder, and CharlesStewart III
Federal Elections Project David Lublin
House and Senate Party Voting Scores Joseph Cooper and Garry Young
House Committee Request Data Scott Frisch and Sean Kelly
Nominal and Adjusted Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) Voting Records, 1947-2007 Sarah Anderson (UCSB) and Philip Habel (SIUC)
Voteview Royce Carroll (Rice), James Lo (UCLA), Jeff Lewis (UCLA), Nolan McCarty (Princeton), Keith Poole (UCSD), and Howard Rosenthal (NYU).
Adjusted Interest Group Scores Timothy Groseclose (UCLA)
Jeff Lewis and Keith Poole's roll call downloads. Jeff Lewis and Keith Poole


Congressional Committees, Historical Standing Committees

Collectors: Garrison Nelson (Vermont)

Contact: Charles Stewart III (MIT)

Preferred citation style: Garrison Nelson, Committees in the U.S. Congress, 1947-1992, [Chamber/Congresses], [date of data file].

Description: Records membership on all congressional committees from the 80th to 102nd Congresses. Data file that corresponds with the hard copy version of Nelson's two-volume set Committees in the U.S. Congress, 1947-1992, CQ Press. Corrections of the data set to Charles Stewart at MIT. Note: the House committee data set for the 96th-102nd Congress Congress is in the same format as the data set below that starts with the 103rd Congress.

Important note: The data file is made available "as is."
 

Download the codebook, House Committees 80th-97th Congress, House Committees 98th-102nd Congress, Senate Committees 80th-102nd Congress, House Committees 96th-102nd Congress (Excel format).

 

Congressional Committees, Historical Standing Committees

Collectors: David Canon (Wisconsin), Garrison Nelson (Vermont), Charles Stewart III (MIT)

Contact: Stewart

Preferred citation style: David Canon, Garrison Nelson, and Charles Stewart. Historical Congressional Standing Committees, 1st to 79th Congresses, 1789-1947: [Chamber/Congresses], [date of data file].

Description: Records membership on all congressional standing committees up to the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. Data set still in progress. Please direct corrections of the data set to Charles Stewart at MIT
 

Chamber

Congresses

House

1-37

Data

Codebook

House

38-79

Data

Codebook

Senate

1-48

Data

Codebook

Senate

49-79

Data

Codebook

 

Congressional Committees, Modern Standing Committees, 103rd--115th Congresses (updated to November 17, 2017)

Collectors:  Charles Stewart III and Jonathan Woon (MIT)

Contact:   Stewart

Preferred citation style:  Charles Stewart III and Jonathan Woon.  Congressional Committee Assignments, 103rd to 114th Congresses, 1993--2017:  [Chamber], [date of data file].

Description:  Records membership on all congressional committees for the periods covered in the study.  Data set is updated periodically from the Congressional Record.  Please report errors to  Charles Stewart.

Note: The data are made available for academic use, but may not be used commercially.
 

Codebook/Data description (text file)

House Committee Assignment Data, updated 11/17/2017 (Excel File)

House Membership Data, updated 8/15/2017 (Excel file)

Senate Committee Assignment Data, updated 11/17/2017 (Excel file)

Senate Membership Data, updated 8/15/2017 (Excel file)

 

Candidate Quality and U.S. Senate Election Data

Collector: David Lublin (American University)

Contact: David Lublin

Preferred citation style: David Lublin. 1994. "Candidate Quality and U.S. Senate Election Data," American University, Washington, D.C.

Description: This data set contains all the data necessary to replicate the results from hisarticle, "Quality, Not Quantity: Strategic Politicians in U.S. Senate Elections, 1952-1990," Journal of Politics, Vol. 56, No. 1 (February 1994).

Download the data

 

Congressional District Demographic and Political Data

Collector: David Lublin (American University)

Contact: David Lublin

Preferred citation style: David Lublin. 1997. "Congressional District Demographic and Political Data," American University, Washington, D.C.

Description: This data set contains all the data necessary to replicate the results from his book, The Paradox of Representation: Racial Gerrymandering and Minority Interests in Congress (Princeton University Press 1997). One could also replicate the results from "The Election of African Americans and Latinos to the U.S. House of Representatives, 1972-1994" American Politics Quarterly (July 1997). More generally, this data set contains demographic and political data for congressional districts utilized from 1962 through 1994. Thanks to Keith Poole and Gary King for providing some of the data contained within this data set.

Download the data

 

Candidate positioning data

Collector: Stephen Ansolabehere, James M. Snyder, and Charles Stewart III

Contact: James Snyder

Preferred citation style: Acknowledge James Snyder.

Description: This data set contains estimated left-right candidate coordinates necessary to replicate the analysis in Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart, "Candidate Positioning in U.S. House Elections," American Journal of Political Science 45(1): 136-159. See the article for details. The data fields are state (postal code), district, name, party (1=dem, 2=rep), location, imputed location.

Download the STATA data set or a raw text file

 

Federal Elections Project

Collector: David Lublin (American University)

Contact: David Lublin

Preferred citation style: David Lublin. 2001. "Federal Elections Project ," American University, Washington, D.C.

Description: The central goal of the Federal Elections Project is to mesh the 2000 U.S. federal election results at the precinct level with the demographic data from the 2000 U.S. Census. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation and in partnership with the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies , David Lublin of American University and D. Stephen Voss of the University of Kentucky will gather data for all federal elections, specifically for president and vice president, senator, and representative. Although the focus is on federal offices, the data set will also include results from the eleven states holding gubernatorial elections in 2000.

Visit the web site.

 

House and Senate Party Voting Scores

Collector: Garry Young

Contact: Joseph Cooper

Preferred citation style: Cite the Cooper web page.

Description: Aggregate congressional roll call scores, 1862-2001.

Visit Joseph Cooper's data page to retrieve the data



House Committee Request Data

Collector: Scott A. Frisch and Sean Q Kelly

Contact: Sean Kelly

Preferred citation style:Frisch, Scott A. and Sean Q Kelly. 2007. House Committee Request Data, 80th-103rd Congress. [Access information].

Description:(The following is taken from the web page): Our committee assignment request data are now available. As the map to the left indicates a tremendous amount of effort went in to the collection of these data that include committee requests for Democratic and Republican members of the House between the 80th and 103rd Congresses (with only a few gaps). With the publication of our book Committee Assignment Politics in the U.S. House of Representatives (University of Oklahoma Press 2006) we want to make these data available to our colleagues. It is our feeling that in many cases using committee assignment data provides an inaccurate and/or incomplete understanding of how committees and committee memberships shape and constrain the behavior of members of Congress.

Visit the web site to retrieve the data.


Nominal and Adjusted Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) Voting Records, 1947-2007

Collector: Sarah Anderson (UCSB) and Philip Habel (SIUC)

Contact: Sarah Anderson or Philip Habel

Preferred citation style: Anderson, Sarah and Philip Habel. "Revisiting Adjusted ADA Scores for the U.S. Congress, 1947-2007" Political Analysis Advance Access published on December 16, 2008.

Description: This data set contains nominal ADA scores and adjusted ADA scores estimated according to the method introduced by Groseclose, Levitt,and Snyder (1999), "Comparing Interest Groups Scores across Time and Chambers: Adjusted ADA Scores for the U.S. Congress" American Political Science Review 93: 33-50.

Download the data


Voteview

Collector: Royce Carroll (Rice), James Lo (UCLA), Jeff Lewis (UCLA), Nolan McCarty (Princeton), Keith Poole (UCSD), and Howard Rosenthal (NYU).

Contact: Keith Poole or Jeff Lewis

Visit the web site


Adjusted Interest Group Scores

Collector: Timothy Groseclose (UCLA).

Contact: Timothy Groseclose

Preferred citation style: Please cite the following article, which explains how the "real" scores were calculated: Tim Groseclose, Steven D. Levitt, and James M. Snyder, Jr., "Comparing Interest Group Scores Across Time and Chambers: Adjusted ADA Scores for the U.S. Congress," American Political Science Review 93 (March): 33-50, 1999.

Visit the web site to download the data


Jeff Lewis and Keith Poole's roll call downloads

Collector: Jeff Lewis (UCLA) and Keith Poole (UGA).

Contact: Jeff Lewis

Visit the web site to download the data