Political Science Research Guide

Dataset Search enables users to find datasets stored across the Web through a simple keyword search. The tool surfaces information about datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web, making these datasets universally accessible and useful.

To serve the research needs of social scientists, teachers, students, policy makers and journalists, the ANES produces high quality data from its own surveys on voting, public opinion, and political participation. Must create a free account to download data sets.

​​​Since 1972, the General Social Survey (GSS) has provided politicians, policymakers, and scholars with a clear and unbiased perspective on what Americans think and feel about such issues as national spendi​ng priorities, crime and punishment, intergroup relations, and confidence in institutions.

The FEC provides copies of filings from candidates, parties and PACs. In addition data files (Some very large) including contributor, candidate, committee and summary data are available for download.

National Institute on Money in State Politics maintains this database that makes available campaign contributions data by state, sector and individual.

NNSP keeps a data archive of state surveys, and provides access to a wide variety of polling data done in the states.

ROAD data include election returns, socioeconomic summaries, and demographic measures of the American public at unusually low levels of geographic aggregation. The NSF-supported ROAD project covers every state in the country from 1984 through 1990 (including some off-year elections). One collection of data sets includes every election at and above State House, along with party registration and other variables, in each state for the roughly 170,000 precincts nationwide (about 60 times the number of counties). Another collection has added to these (roughly 30-40) political variables an additional 3,725 variables merged from the 1990 U.S. Census for 47,327 aggregate units (about 15 times the number of counties) about the size one or more cities or towns. These units completely tile the U.S. landmass. This collection also includes geographic boundary files so users can easily draw maps with these data.

On this site, you will find voting, registration and geographic datasets for the State of California for statewide elections beginning in 1992. Made available via the University of California Law School.

The Manifesto Project provides the scientific community with parties’ policy positions derived from a content analysis of parties’ electoral manifestos. Wide geographic coverage.

The World Bank's Data Catalog provides download access to over 2000 indicators arranged by country, indicator and topic. The World Bank is a premier source for data on economic and social issues throughout the world.

The Global Health Observatory (GHO) is WHO's portal providing access to data and analyses for monitoring the global health situation. It provides critical data and analyses for key health themes, as well as direct access to the full database. The GHO presents data from all WHO programs and provides links to supporting information.

The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project conducts public opinion surveys around the world on a broad array of subjects ranging from people’s assessments of their own lives to their views about the current state of the world and important issues of the day. Survey data are released after all reporting is completed, typically two years following completion of the fielding of the survey.

Eurostat is the Statistical Office of the European Communities. Its task is to provide the European Union with statistics at European level that enable comparisons between countries and regions

Key resources produced by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations: reports, statistics, policies and other publications.