American Local Government Elections Database

Abstract

The study of urban and local politics in the United States has long been hindered by a lack of centralized sources of election data. We introduce a new dataset of nearly 55,000 electoral contests that encompasses races for seven distinct local political offices in most medium and large cities and counties in the U.S. over the last three decades. Our data provide partisan and demographic information about candidates in these races as well as electoral outcomes. We demonstrate the utility of these data with three applications: the descriptive representation of women and race/ethnic groups among candidates and office-holders, the partisan nationalization of local contests, and the match between district partisanship and local politicians’ voting records in city councils. Together, our data provide a myriad of opportunities for future research on subnational politics and remove a significant barrier to the study of representation and elections in local governments.