Subject Guides

Political Science: Statistics & Data

Statistics and data sets cover politics, economics and related areas.

Frequently Requested Data / Statistics ..	Find in...
Democracy Indicators / Levels of Democracy	Freedom of the Word; Polity Regime Trends; Nations, Development & Democracy
Education Levels	World Development Indicators
Election Turnout / Voting Levels	Voting, Elections & Elections Data page
GDP & GNP	Global Financial Data, International Financial Statistics
GINI	World Development Indicators, Global Financial Data
Human Rights	CIRI Human Rights Data Project
Legislative Bodies	Cross National Time Series
Migration	UNDATA
Political Rebellion	Cross National TIme Series
Polls & Public Opinion	Polling Data & Public Opinion page
Population (United States)	Global Financial Data (historical and projected), Statistical Insight, Social Explorer
Population (non- United States)	Global Financial Data (historical and projected)
Roll Call Votes (US)	ICPSR

Indexes and General Data Sets

Sources for large data sets and statistical sources that cross many subject areas.

ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) Data Archive
Provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction. For more information see Data Services for Social Sciences.
Must set up an account using BU email address to download data on ICSPR site. Code books for data available on ICSPR site. ICSPR also offers training in quantitative methods to facilitate effective data use.
Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive
Covering over 200 countries and hundreds of variables, including measurements for Domestic Conflict Events, Assassinations, General Strikes, Terrorism/Guerrilla Warfare, Major Government Crises, Purges, Riots, Revolutions, and Anti-government Demonstrations. Covers from 1815-present, with exceptions for World Wars.
Data is available in Excel spreadsheets. Includes historical countries and empires that no longer exist.
Social Explorer
Provides access to US decennial census data from 1790 to 2010, American Community Survey data and selected business, economic, crime, health, environmental and religious data. It does not include data for all census geographies, particularly for earlier decennial censuses. Users can customize, save, print, export and email reports and maps

UNdata
Search and download data collected by various groups across the United Nations from one interface.
Eurostat
Leading provider of high quality statistics on Europe. Allows bulk downloads.
Paul Hensel's International Relations Data Site
Links to data covering conflict and conflict resolutions; environmental issues; economic, political & social science data.
PoliData: Data for Sale
Data sets broken down by legislative districts and county. Each set can be purchased individually by the user.
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The Libraries can not purchase data sets at this time from PoliData.
Statistics & Census Data
Sources for local, national and international data.

Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive
Covering over 200 countries and hundreds of variables, including measurements for Domestic Conflict Events, Assassinations, General Strikes, Terrorism/Guerrilla Warfare, Major Government Crises, Purges, Riots, Revolutions, and Anti-government Demonstrations. Covers from 1815-present, with exceptions for World Wars.
Data is available in Excel spreadsheets. Includes historical countries and empires that no longer exist.

Center on Democratic Performance (Binghamton University)
Contains such reports and data sets as the Presidential Human Rights Report Card, Institution and Elections Project dataset, Election Results Archive.
Freedom in the World
Countries are ranked on measures of political rights and civil liberties, and then given a designation as "free" to "not free."
Polity Regime Trends
Measures the authority characteristics of states.
Database of Political Institutions
WorldBank dataset ranking governments on a variety of factors including economic and religious orientations, number of seats held, current electoral rules and federalism levels.
Quality of Government Dataset
Compiles a wide range of freely available data on the causes, consequences, and nature of that relate to the Quality of Government (QoG).
Nations, Development, and Democracy, 1800-2005
Complies data from Polity, Freedom House and WDI for 187 countries.
Global Terrorism Database
Systematic open source database documenting international and domestic terrorist incidents.

QuotaProject: Global Database of Quotas for Women
Contains information on the use of electoral quotas for women. Electoral quotas are defined as mandatory or targeted percentages of women candidates for public elections.

For help getting started: Finding Statistics and Data.
Fundamentals of Polling: Polling 101 and Analyzing Polls: Polling 201 provide information on understanding how polls are conducted and how to understand and interpret the data collected by telephone polls, exit surveys, and other large scale polls