voting history

Where did all the votes go?

What happens to voting data after the election is over? What happens to all those certified results by polling place? How is it that there’s so much coverage leading up to and on the night of the election, but this guy seems to be one of the few sources of historical voting data? Amusingly, I found it linked on the Library of Congress’ website!

There’s some very old sources from E. Bowditch J. McConnel, who wrote some papers on voting patterns up to the 2000 election. The Census Bureau reports in detail on who registered and voted (including age, race, education, sex, marital status, veteran status, and more), but not how they voted, and not by geography.

OpenSecrets.org has political contribution stats by zip code (interesting: my last ZIP Code in NH contributes considerably less than my current zip code). Their data is based on the disclosure files managed and distributed by the Federal Election Commission.

Perhaps I’m just looking in the wrong place to find party aggregated registration information or vote histories by county or ZIP code?