Research Guides: Politics: Data & Primary Sources

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Campaign Finance

Campaign finance data
See how candidates and committees raise and spend money in federal elections, 1979/80 - present.
~ Federal Election Commission
OpenSecrets.org
Presents data on campaign contributions gathered from public records.

Government Data

Data.gov
Portal to data, tools, and resources gathered, created, and published by U.S. government organizations and agencies.

U.S. Census Bureau
View pre-created tables or generate your own tables of socioeconomic and demographic data at the national, state, and metro level.
U.S. Politics Data sets
Downloadable survey datasets provided by Pew Research's Center for the People & the Press.

Statistical Abstract of the U.S. [PROQUEST]
Access the Statistical Abstract of the United States (1970 - present). Search one volume at a time or multiple volumes simultaneously. Charts can be downloaded into Excel for further data manipulation.
The ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political and economic conditions of the United States from 1970 to today.

Population Reference Bureau
Click on the DataFinder to access the PRB's user-friendly database for obtaining basic demographic and health data on the countries of the world.

Historical Statistics of the United States [CAMBRIDGE]
Compendium that includes thousands of data series related to health, crime, migration, and the economy.
RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents (RDWTI)
Compilation of data from 1968 through 2009.
World DataBank
Analysis and visualisation tool that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics.
Create your own queries; generate tables, charts, and maps; and easily save, embed, and share them.

Elections

American Local Government Elections Database
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 about 78,000 candidates in 57,000 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.
Election Resources on the Internet
Links to sources of international election data on the Internet.
IFES Election Guide
This website posts results of elections from countries both large and small, dating back to 1998.
U.S. Census: Voting and Registration
Detailed breakdowns of voting and registration by sex, age, race, state, and other dimensions. Coverage runs from the mid-1960s through the present day.
U.S. Congress Election Statistics
Official election results for every U.S. Senate and House of Representatives race from 1920 through the present.

Newspapers

Access World News Research Collection [NEWSBANK]
Comprehensive news collection ideal for exploring issues and events at the local, regional, and national level. Diverse source types include print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos.
African American Newspapers (Series 1, 1827-1998) [READEX/NEWSBANK]
Chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience, African American Newspapers, Series 1, features 270 newspapers from 35 states, including many rare and historically significant 19th-century titles. These titles published for or by African Americans constitute valuable primary sources for researchers exploring such diverse disciplines as cultural, literary and social history; ethnic studies and more.
Beginning with Freedoms Journal (NY)the first African American newspaper published in the United States the titles in this groundbreaking series include The Colored Citizen (KS), Arkansas State Press, Rights of All (NY), Wisconsin Afro-American, New York Age, L'Union (LA), Northern Star and Freemans Advocate (NY), Richmond Planet, Cleveland Gazette, The Appeal (MN) and hundreds of others from every region of the U.S.
American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection [EBSCO]
Full text access to over two centuries of print culture (1693-1877), ranging from early periodicals imported by the colonists to titles published on American soil on the eve of the Revolution through the Reconstruction.
Series 1: https://geisel.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&custid=geisel&profile=ehost&defaultdb=h9h&groupid=main

Series 2: https://geisel.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&custid=geisel&profile=ehost&defaultdb=h9i&groupid=main

Series 3: https://geisel.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&custid=geisel&profile=ehost&defaultdb=h9j&groupid=main

Series 4: https://geisel.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&custid=geisel&profile=ehost&defaultdb=h9k&groupid=main

Series 5: https://geisel.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&custid=geisel&profile=ehost&defaultdb=h9m&groupid=main
American Periodicals Series [PROQUEST]
Full text access to periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.
Boston Globe [PROQUEST]
Full-text, HTML only articles, published in the Boston Globe from 1987 to the present.
Boston Globe-Historical [PROQUEST]
Full-text/PDF page-image of articles published in the Boston Globe from 1872 to 1986.
Early American Newspapers, Series 1: From Colonies to Nation [READEX/NEWSBANK]
Cover-to-cover reproductions of hundreds of historic American newspapers (1690-1876), including 37 from New Hampshire.
Primary Sources [GALE]
Cross-search all available Gale digital archives from a single interface.
News: Gale OneFile [GALE]
Access to more than 2,300 major U.S. regional, national, and local newspapers, as well as leading titles from around the world. It also includes thousands of images, radio and TV broadcasts and transcripts.
International Newsstream [PROQUEST]
Full text access to the world's top newspapers.
Includes access to: The Times (London), The Bangkok Post, El Norte, Financial Times, The Guardian, Jerusalem Post, South China Morning Post, The Daily Telegraph, Asian Wall Street Journal, and the BBC Monitoring series
New Hampshire Union Leader Collection
Read (HTML only) Union Leader articles from 1989 to the present. View the full page, cover-to-cover, digital image edition starting with the April 24, 2018 issue
New York Times [PROQUEST]
Full-text of articles published in the New York Times, via ProQuest Central
This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.

Full Text Included

Subject Area(s): The Arts,History,News & Newspapers,Science & Technology

Coverage: 1851-2014
New York Times-Historical with Index [PROQUEST]
Full-text/PDF access to the New York Times, from 1851 to four years ago via ProQuest.
This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. The Historical New York Times with Index (1851-1993) provides search capability using subject terms and topics for focused and targeted results in combination with searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from the Historical New York Times.
Coverage: 1851-4 years ago
Newspaper Source [EBSCO]
Full-text articles from several major national and international newspapers, plus select full-text access to regional newspapers.
Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic)
Access to over 5,600 news, business, legal, medical and reference publications (most full-text, the rest abstracted), primarily newspapers, magazines and journals.
Covers local, regional and international newspapers (in English and non-English languages). Includes broadcast transcripts, case law, legal codes, regulations, Shepard's Citations to Supreme Court cases (back to 1789), company financial information, and SEC filings and reports.
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers [GALE]
Digital cover-to-cover images of hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers, providing access to every article, advertisement, and illustration.
Periodicals Archive Online [PROQUEST]
Archive of hundreds of digitized journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
**Library has access to the Foundation Collection - nearly 220 scholarly full text journals from the 1800s to the 2000s.
Sunday Times Historical Archive [GALE]
Digital access to The Sunday Times Historical Archive, 1822-2006. Access to the complete run of the newspaper up to 2006, including all of its supplements.
Times Digital Archive [GALE]
Digital full-text access to every issue of The Times (London) newspaper from 1785 through 2014, except for Sunday editions (which are available through the Sunday Times Digital Archive).
First published in 1785, The Times of London is widely considered to be the world's 'newspaper of record'. The Times Digital Archive allows users to search over 200 years of this invaluable historical source.
Union Leader / Sunday News (Image Collection) [NEWSBANK]
The day's top news and sports stories appearing in the print version of the Union Leader.
US Newsstream [PROQUEST]
Collection of full text international, national, and regional newspapers. Titles of note include Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and The Guardian.
Wall Street Journal [PROQUEST]
Full text access to the Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition).

Primary Sources

The American Presidency Project
An impressive collection of presidential documents, including the text of press conferences, executive orders, state of the union addresses, and the Public Papers of the Presidents. 1923 - Present
European Navigator
This website provides access to important documents about the formation and development of the European Community and European Union.

Federal Register
Official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents.

Foreign Relations of the United States
This series is the the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity.

Founders Online
Written record of the original thoughts, ideas, debates, and principles of our democracy.
You can search across the records of all six Founders and read first drafts of the Declaration of Independence, the spirited debate over the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the very beginnings of American law, government, and our national story. You can compare and contrast the thoughts and ideas of these six individuals and their correspondents as they discussed and debated through their letters and documents.
Homeland Security Digital Library
Documents related to homeland security policy, strategy, and organizational management collected from a wide variety of sources.
Includes federal, state, tribal, and local government agencies, professional organizations, think tanks, academic institutions, and international governing bodies. Resources are carefully selected and evaluated by a team of librarians and subject-matter specialists.

National Security Archive
This comprehensive collection of primary documents includes more than 60,000 declassified documents regarding critical U.S. policy decisions.
Wilson Center Digital Archive
Constructed and maintained by the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program, the Digital Archive contains newly declassified historical materials from archives around the world—much of it in translation and including diplomatic cables, high level correspondence, meeting minutes and more.

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Supports the Cold War International History Project, the North Korea International Documentation Project, and the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project.
Datasets by the Reflective Democracy Campaign
The Reflective Democracy Campaign investigates and confronts the demographics of power in the United States.
Jewish Virtual Library
The Jewish Virtual Library is the most comprehensive online Jewish encyclopedia in the world, covering everything from anti-Semitism to Zionism. So far, more than 13,000 articles and 6,000 photographs and maps have been integrated into the site. The Library has 13 wings: History, Women, The Holocaust, Travel, Israel & the States, Maps, Politics, Biography, Israel, Religion, Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress, Vital Statistics and Reference. Much of the information in the Library cannot be found anywhere else in the world, such as material on joint U.S.-Israel projects, cooperation between Israel and the individual states and the treatment of Americans during the Holocaust.

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We have also received permission to use material from the American Jewish Historical Society, Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Prime Ministers Office, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin (author of Jewish Literacy) and dozens of other sources.
Library of Congress - LGBTQ+ Politics and Political Candidates Web Archive
The LGBTQ+ Politics and Political Candidates Web Archive captures digital content related to LBGTQ+ political candidates and political issues and topics at various levels of government, with a focus on lesser-known local and state politics. This archive preserves a representative sample of what is being called "The Rainbow Wave," which refers to the previously unprecedented number of LGBTQ+ identified candidates openly running for office. These websites provide a record of individuals attempting historic firsts in American politics. In many cases, these individuals are or are attempting to become the first LGBTQ+ identified candidate to run for or hold the office being sought. In addition, as LGBTQ+ political issues are evolving rapidly, a representative sample of LGBTQ+ political and legal organizations, media, and rhetoric are likewise included here.
Policy Archive
A digital library of public policy research, containing thousands of reports and documents from research institutes and think tanks across the country.
World War I Document Archive
This archive of primary documents from World War One has been assembled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List (WWI-L). International in focus, the archive intends to present in one location primary documents concerning the Great War.

Politics: Data & Primary Sources

Contents

Ask a Librarian

Contact the Reference Desk

Reference Desk Hours

Campaign Finance

Government Data

Elections

Newspapers

Primary Sources