Data

I believe it is important for academic scholars to provide access to their datasets. The goal of academic research is to pursue knowledge. Notwithstanding data protected by confidentiality requirements, open access to data should be a priority in academia. Today scholars spend too much time collecting data that dozens of other individuals or organizations have already collected.

I have found this to be frustratingly true in the study of the United States Congress. The federal government, as well as numerous private-sector oganizations (like Congressional Quarterly, National Journal, and LexisNexis) record vast amounts of data, but those data are often hard to access, or not free. Most scholars of the U.S. Congress also collect vast amounts of data, and many of them make their data available. However, these data are scattered about the internet with limited efforts to catalogue it all (although a great deal of credit is due to Charles Stewart for his excellent collection).

The purpose of this page is to combine access to datasets I have been a part of collecting with links to datasets collected by other scholars, governmental agencies, or private organizations, that are available for free online. These data, along with descriptions, are organized by topic below:

My Data

These data were either collected by me or by me along with my coauthors.

Data for 'I'm Your Puppet'
Description: This file contains the data used for "I'm Your Puppet: The Changing Role of the House Committee on Rules". Included is information on the committee assignments of each member of congress from the 97th through the 111th congresses, other membership data including chamber seniority, and information on the use of special rules.
Authors: James M Curry and Jill L. Curry
Suggested citation: Curry, James M. and Jill L. Curry. Committee Assignments and Rules Committee Data, 97th-111th Congresses: [date of data download].

Other Data

These data were compiled by other authors and only linked to here. All gratitude and thanks should go to the authors listed.

[ Roll Call Voting ] [ Committee Assignments ] [ Ideology ]
[ Membership ] [ Congressional Elections ] [ District Data ]
[ Legislation ] [ Floor Speech ] [ Other ]

Roll Call Voting

    VoteView.com
    Description: VoteView contains DW-NOMINATE, party unity scores, and general roll call voting data for both the House and Senate starting with the 1st Congress through the present day.
    Authors: Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal

    Adjusted ADA Scores, 1947-2007
    Description: This dataset includes adjusted ADA scores for all members of the House and Senate from 1947-2007 by congress, as well as other variables.
    Authors: Sarah Anderson and Philip Habel

    House and Senate Party Voting Scores
    Description: Thes data contain traditional aggregate voting scores as well as Cooper-Young structuring scores from the 40th through the 108th Congresses (1867-2005)
    Authors: Joseph Cooper and Garry Young

    Roll Calls of the Continental Congresses and the Congresses of the Confederation, 1777-1789
    Description: This dataset includes 1,593 roll calls taken in the Continental Congresses of the Confederation in the years 1777-1789.
    Author: Clifford L. Lord

    Roll Call Voting Records for the Confederate Congresses, 1862-1865
    Description: This data collection contains complete roll call records for the approximately 1,900 votes taken in both chambers of the three Confederate Congresses in the period 1862-1865.
    Authors: Thomas B. Alexander and Richard E. Beringer
Committee Assignments Member Ideology Membership Data Congressional Elections
    Candidate Quality and U.S. Senate Election Data
    Description: This dataset includes data on candidate quality and other election variables from 1952-1990.
    Author: David Lublin

    2000 Federal Elections Data
    Description: This dataset contains precinct election data from the 2000 federal election from around the nation matched with racial data from the 2000 U.S. Census.
    Author: David Lublin
District Data Legislation
    Congressional Bills Project
    Description: This public resource provides information about more than 400,000 bills introduced in the U.S. Congress, currently 1947-2008, along with extensive information about each bill's progress and sponsor.
    Authors: E.Scott Adler and John Wilkerson

    Policy Agendas Project
    Description: Available datasets include congressional hearings, statutes, Congressional Quarterly stories, a sample of New York Times stories, Gallup's Most Important Problem series, Presidential Executive Orders, Presidential State of the Union Addresses, Supreme Court Cases, Congressional Bills, and Congressional roll call votes.
    Authors: Bryan Jones, John Wilkerson, and Frank Baumgartner
Floor Speech
Other