Do you ever scratch your head wondering about voting behaviour? The ANES: American National Election Studies exists to collect those data to allow researchers to test hypotheses regarding correlations between demographic factors, attitudes, and voting behaviour. The web site has the results of both a constant set of questions that have been posed for almost 50 years as well as others created and thoroughly tested for special inquiries. Interviews (about 1,800 respondents, 70‐minute interviews) immediately precede and follow national elections. This is a staggering set of data about elections and voter characteristics and attitudes from 1948 through the present, collected initially by the University of Michigan and later placed in the public domain by the archival and data dissemination facilities of the Inter‐university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).
Data include in‐depth demographic variables such as religious affiliation to more esoteric variables like farmer's association membership, knowledge and attitudes toward district office holders, attitudes toward politicians and political activity. Researchers can use this site for exploring connections between any of the wide array of demographic factors, societal attitudes and voting behaviours. Students can use this site for looking at basic information already created, such as the religious affiliation of respondents from 1948 to the present. More sophisticated students can download the information into statistical software SAS, SPSS or Stata to explore correlations themselves. The web site is easily navigated. Tabs are: Data Center, Help Center, Online Commons, Guide to Public Opinion, Reference Library, Conferences, About ANES, People, and Other Election Studies. Some information is freely available; other information is for members only. ANES has to restrict data to protect respondent privacy and associated issues of legal liability. Fees are charged to allay the costs incurred for responding to applications for further access.
The Data Center has ZIP files of time series, pilot studies and special studies. The second tab gets the user to directions on downloading, studying code, and making proposals for studies. The Online Commons is the mechanism for allowing scholars to propose innovations in data collection and avenues to explore. The Guide to Public Opinion is a treasure trove of information. There is longitudinal data on actual knowledge of elected officials, attitudes about politics and politicians, but the most interesting is a set of data on attitudes towards hot button issues over the years. For example, there are charts of attitudes toward civil rights, including school integration, governmental role in equal employment opportunities, women's place in society, abortion, school prayer, and the like. One section deals with political participation, not just level of involvement with political parties but down to the level of whether or not the respondent wore a campaign button or had a sign on their property. There are also statistics on attitudes toward specific elected officials. The Reference Library has references to more than 5,400 journal articles and research reports that have been made possible with the American National Election Statistics. Many studies explore the relationships between gender or race and voting behaviour. Other fascinating studies are those such as Social Altruism and Voter Turnout or Does the Internet Increase Voter Participation in Elections? Or What is it about Government that Americans Dislike?
The final tab links the user to other American datasets on elections as well as comparative and world electoral information. There are British, Canadian, European, German, Israeli and New Zealand election studies as well as the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, and the Inter‐Parliamentary Union.
This is a rich resource for political science researchers, students, and citizens. ANES allows the software knowledgeable researcher to readily study the connections between demographic characteristics, attitudes, and voting behaviour. For the rest of us, it is intriguing to trace attitudes through the last 50 years.
