Record of American Democracy, All Documentation and Miscellaneous Files

The Record of American Democracy (ROAD) data provide election returns, socioeconomic summaries, and demographic details about the American public at unusually low levels of geographic aggregation. The NSF-supported ROAD project spans every state in the country from 1984 through 1990 (including some off-year elections). These data enable research on topics such as electoral behavior, the political characteristics of local community context, electoral geography, the role of minority groups in elections and legislative redistricting, split ticket voting and divided government, and elections under federalism. One set of files (Part 4, PRECINCT directory, consisting of 205 SPSS portable files) 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 set of files (Part 5, MCDGRP directory, 52 SPSS portable files) has added to these roughly 30-40 political variables an additional 3,725 variables merged from the 1990 United States Census for 47,327 aggregate units called MCD Groups. The MCD Group is a construct for purposes of this data collection. It is based on a merging of t he electoral precincts and Census Minor Civil Divisions (MCDs). An MCD is about the size of a city or town. An MCD Group is smaller than or equal to a county and (except in California) is greater than or equal to the size of an MCD. The MCD Group units completely tile the United States landmass. The program used to create the MCD group level is also included as part of this collection, as well as the input and output files. This collection also includes geographic boundary files so users can easily draw maps with these data. Documentation and frequently asked questions are available online at the ROAD Website . A downloadable PDF codebook is also available in the files section of this study.