America at the Polls 1960‐2004: John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush: A Handbook of American Presidential Election Statistics is the latest volume in the series from CQ Press. This is a single volume which can be purchased on its own, but it is also the second volume in a two volume set entitled, America at the Polls 1920‐2004 (the first volume is America at the Polls 1920‐1956: Harding to Eisenhower). This reference work has become a classic and is known for presenting presidential election statistics in a cumulative, easy to read state‐by‐state, county‐by‐county format. In general, the source of data has been official state canvass reports, but reports from the Clerk of the House of Representatives, reports from the National Archives and other sources are examined to insure authority and reliability of statistics.
The first section summarizes each presidential election by popular vote, electoral vote for each state and also includes the minority candidates for each election. For example, for the 2004 election, in addition to candidates from the Republican, Democratic, Independent, and Libertarian parties there were 13 other write‐in candidates from various obscure political parties (e.g. Workers World, Personal Choice, Prohibition, and Christian Freedom).
The second section presents the states in chronological order. Each state begins with a summary page that shows the state‐wide and electoral‐college vote and the county‐by‐county details in each election. Each decennial census is listed with tables that include the Republican‐Democratic‐Other breakdown, pluralities, and percentages of total and major party votes for Republican and Democratic candidates. The state tables list any third party candidate such as Ross Perot (1992) and Ralph Nader (2000). A current state map with county boundaries is included. There is also a Notes section for each state that mentions special circumstances of the vote such as canvassing problems and discrepancies in the voting returns.
The final section provides primary vote totals for each state for all candidates that were listed on the ballot in at least one primary. The last two pages give a chronological summary of the primary votes for those candidates in the Democratic and Republican parties who received at least 200,000 votes nationwide.
America at the Polls is an essential one stop resource for presidential election statistics and is useful for political researchers at any level. My only complaint is that since this volume represents an update of the previously published America at the Polls 1960‐2000 it is rather pricey considering the only new content added are the statistics for the 2004 election. For libraries that own the earlier volume it is an optional purchase, but otherwise recommended for all libraries both academic and public.
