A collection of political datasets. The datasets are listed below within specific categories: cabinets, citizens, constitutions, political institutions, parties and politicians, democracy, economics, elections, international relations, media, policy, political elites, political speeches and debates. All datasets are listed in the datasets in the repository (.xlsx, .csv) with detailed information on the topics, coverage and availability of the respective datasets.
name= Name of datasetcategory= Dataset category (cabinets,citizensetc.)link= URL to datasettopics= Specific topics of interest in the datasetcountry= Name of country (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2)region_africa= Country in African Group (United Nations Regional Groups of Member States)region_asia= Country in Asia-Pacific Group (United Nations Regional Groups of Member States)region_easteurope= Country in Eastern European Group (United Nations Regional Groups of Member States)region_latinamerica= Country in Latin American and Caribbean Group (United Nations Regional Groups of Member States)region_westeurope= Country in Western European and Others Group (United Nations Regional Groups of Member States)year_start= Time coverage, year startyear_end= Time coverage, year endavailability= Availability of datasetregistration= Requirements for data accesslicense= License (identifiers from SPDX License List)file_codebook= URL to documentation (usually.pdf)file_csv= URL to dataset (.csv)file_dta= URL to dataset (.dta)file_sav= URL to dataset (.sav)file_excel= URL to dataset (Excel)file_r= URL to dataset (.Rdata)file_zip= URL to compressed dataset (.zip)variable_country= Name of country string variablevariable_year= Name of year variablevariable_cow= Name of Correlates of War numeric identifier variabledoi_article= DOI for related publicationdoi_dataset= DOI for datasetrevised= Date for last revision in PolData (ISO 8601, YYYYMMDD)
Make a new issue in the repository or send me a mail at erikgahner@gmail.com.
- Basic data on parliaments
- Chilean Ministers
- Chilean Undersecretaries
- Coalition Governance in Central Eastern Europe
- Dutch Parliamentary Voting Dataset
- European Representative Democracy
- Foreign Minister Dataset
- Lobby meetings with UK Government Ministers
- ParlGov: Cabinets
- Parliamentary Rules Database
- Parliaments and governments database
- Parltrack
- Seki-Williams Government and Ministers Data
- United States of America Cabinet Appointments Dataset
- Veto Players Data
- WhoGov
- Afrobarometer
- Americas Barometer
- Arab Barometer
- Asian Barometer
- Caucasus Barometer
- Eurobarometer
- Latinobarómetro
- American National Election Studies
- Australian Election Studies: Voter Studies
- Austrian National Election Study
- Belgium General Election Study
- British Election Study
- Canadian Election Study
- Danish National Election Study
- Dutch Parliamentary Electoral Studies
- Estonian National Election Study
- Finnish National Election Study
- French Electoral Study
- German Longitudinal Election Study
- Hellenic National Election Studies
- Icelandic National Election Study
- Irish National Election Study
- Israel National Election Studies
- Italian National Election Studies
- New Zealand Election Study
- Norwegian Election Studies
- Portuguese Voters Survey
- Scottish Election Study
- Spanish National Election Study
- Swedish National Election Studies
- Swiss Electoral Studies
- Welsh Election Study
- Australian Constitutional Referendum Study
- Australian National Political Attitudes Surveys
- British Social Attitudes
- Chinese General Social Survey
- Comparative National Elections Project
- Comparative Study of Electoral Systems
- Cooperative Congressional Election Study
- Cultural Pathways to Economic Self-Sufficiency and Entrepreneurship
- Democracy Fund Voter Study Group
- EUI-YouGov survey on Solidarity in Europe
- European Quality of Life
- European Social Survey
- European Values Study
- General Social Survey
- German General Social Survey
- Global Preferences Survey
- International Social Survey Programme
- Investing in Education in Europe
- Issue Competition Comparative Project
- Korean General Social Survey
- Life in Transition Survey
- Making Electoral Democracy Work
- Nationscape
- Pew Global Attitudes Survey
- Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe
- Survey of the Incarcerated
- The SOM Institute Cumulative Dataset
- World Values Survey
- American Trends Panel Datasets
- British Household Panel Survey
- Survey of Income and Program Participation
- Cooperative Congressional Election Study
- German Socio-Economic Panel
- Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics Panel
- Israel Polarization Panel Dataset
- Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences
- Norwegian Citizen Panel
- Short-term Campaign Panel
- Swiss Household Panel
- The American Panel Survey
- Understanding Society
- European Mood
- Executive Approval Database
- Comparative Agendas Project: Public Opinion & Interest Groups
- Policy Ideology in Europe
- Public Gender Egalitarianism Database
- Public Policy Mood
- State-level climate concern
- The American Ideology Project
- Worlds of Journalism
- Europe Elects
- European Opinion Polls as Open Data
- FiveThirtyEight's Pollster Ratings
- FiveThirtyEight polls
- Irish Demographic Polling Datasets
- Irish Polling Indicator
- PollBase
- PollBasePro: Daily Estimates of Aggregate Voting Intention in Great Britain
- Poll of Polls
- Polls and the Timeline of Elections
- Public support for political parties in Denmark
- State Executive Approval Database
- SwedishPolls
- Comparative Constitutions Project
- Constitutional Court of Turkey Justice Decisions Dataset
- Electoral Legislation by Country
- Judicial Checks and Balances
- Religion and State Project Constitutions Dataset
- ACLP Political and Economic Database
- Berlin Infringement Database
- Comparative Political Data Set
- Comparative Voter ID Law Index
- Congressional Whip Count Database
- Court of Justice of the European Union Database
- Database of Political Institutions
- Disclosure by Politicians
- Electoral Law Indicators
- Electoral System Design Database
- Evolution of European Union Law
- Extraterritorial Voting Rights and Restrictions Dataset
- German Federal Courts Dataset
- Institutional Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts
- Institutions and Elections Project
- Judicial Review of Congress Database
- Legislative production in the EU, 1967-2012
- Presidential Power Scores
- Rule of Law Index
- The Centre for European Policy Studies EurLex dataset
- The Political Constraint Index
- U.S. District Court Database
- Age, gender and profession of parliamentarians
- Autocratic Ruling Parties Dataset
- Bundestag Roll Call Vote Data
- Canadian Federal and Ontario Provincial Candidates
- Candidates in American General Elections
- Chapel Hill Expert Survey
- CMP Government Positions Data
- Coalition Inclusion Probabilities Dataset
- Commissioners of the European Union
- Comparative Agendas Project
- CongressData
- Congress slaveowners
- Congressional Scandals
- Danish Legislator Database
- Elected LGBTQ Officials
- EPRG MEP Surveys
- Ethnonationalism in Party Competition
- Every Politician
- German Party Finance Dataset
- Global Party Survey
- Immigration in Party Manifestos
- Issue ownership
- Legislator Diversity
- Local Candidate Dataset
- Manifesto Project Main Dataset (Party Preferences)
- Members and Activists of Political Parties
- Members of the European Parliament
- MPs additional income
- National Defense Engagement Index
- New Parties and Party System Innovation in Western Europe since 1945
- Norwegian Parliamentary Elections, 1906-2021
- One-Party Membership Dataset
- ParlGov: Parties
- Parliaments Day-By-Day
- Parties’ Group Appeals Dataset
- Party Facts
- Party Policy in Modern Democracies
- Party positions from Wikipedia tags
- Party primaries in Spain
- Party Representation of Social Groups
- Party-Interest Group Relationships in Contemporary Democracies
- Political Leaders’ Affiliation Database
- Political Parties of India
- Political Party Database
- Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey
- Private Members' Bills in the UK House of Commons
- Regional Manifestos Project
- Roll Call Votes in the European Parliament
- Scottish Party Election Manifestos
- Select American State Party Platforms
- State Legislator Shor-McCarty Ideology Data
- The Comparative Legislators Database
- The Dataset of Turkish Political Elites
- The PopuList
- The Reed-Smith Japanese House of Representatives Elections Dataset
- Thin Anti-Establishment Supply Dataset
- Varieties of Party Identity and Organization (V-Party)
- Voteview: Congressional Roll-Call Votes Database
- Women in National Parliaments
- A Lexicial Index of Electoral Democracy
- Authoritarian Regimes Dataset
- Autocracies of the World
- Autocratic Regime Data
- Boix-Miller-Rosato (BMR) dichotomous coding of democracy
- Civil Liberty Dataset
- Democracy/Autocracy Data Set
- Democracy Barometer
- Democracy Cross-National Data
- Democratic Accountability and Citizen-Politician Linkages
- Democratic Diffusion
- Electoral Systems and the Personal Vote
- Global State of Democracy
- Political Regimes of the World
- Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions
- Polyarchy Index of Democracy
- State Democracy Index
- Unified Democracy Scores
- Varieties of Democracy
- Administrative Capacities
- Corruption Perceptions Index
- Quality of Government
- Relative Political Capacity Dataset
- State Reach in Africa
- Telecommunications Ownership and Control
- Territorial Self-Governance Dataset
- Worldwide Bureaucracy Indicators
- Worldwide Governance Indicators
- A millennium of macroeconomic data
- Bank for International Settlements
- Barro-Ursua Macroeconomic Data
- Central Bank Governors
- Chinn-Ito Index
- Comparative Income Taxation Database
- Comparative Independent Fiscal Institutions
- COVID-19 Economic Stimulus Index
- Culture of cooperation and inclusive political institutions
- Database of Sub-national Economic Output
- Design of Trade Agreements Database
- Economic Freedom of the World
- Economic Policy Uncertainty Index
- Expanded Trade and GDP Data
- Federico-Tena World Trade Historical Database
- Financial Development and Structure Dataset
- Financial Reform Database
- Financing the State
- Fiscal Crisis Episodes
- Global Debt Database
- Global Earnings Inequality Database
- Global Repository of Income Dynamics
- Global State Revenues and Expenditures
- Gridded global datasets for Gross Domestic Product and Human Development Index
- IMF Programs and World Bank Projects
- Imperial Roots of Global Trade
- International Trade and Production Database for Estimation
- Interwar Debt
- Jordà-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory Database
- Long-Term Productivity Database
- Maddison Project Database
- National Accounts Main Aggregates Database
- Real effective exchange rates
- Rosés-Wolf database on regional GDP
- Standardized World Income Inequality Database
- Subnational Trade Competitiveness
- Systemic Banking Crises Database
- Total Economy Database
- Union Centralization among Advanced Industrial Societies
- World Economic Outlook
- World Income Inequality Database
- World Wealth and Income Database
- African Elections Database
- American Local Government Elections Database
- Comprehensive European Parliament Electoral Data
- Constituency-Level Elections Archive
- Democratic Electoral Systems
- Danish General Election Results
- Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections
- Eggers and Spirling British Political Development database
- Electoral Management Survey
- Electoral Volatility and its internal components in Western Europe
- Electoral Volatility in the European Parliament elections
- European NUTS-Level Election Database
- German Bundestag Election Results at Constituency Level
- Global Dataset on Turnout
- Global Elections Database
- Inequality and Direct Democracy: European Referenda
- Inequality and Direct Democracy: International Referenda
- Local Government Dataset
- National Elections Across Democracy and Autocracy
- NCSL Ballot Measures
- Negative Campaigning Comparative Data
- Net Volatility in Western Europe
- ParlGov: Elections
- Partisan Electoral Interventions by the Great-powers
- Perceptions of Electoral Integrity
- Political Conflict and Democracy: Election Campaigns
- Political Parties, Presidents, Elections, and Governments (PPEG)
- Presidential, Senatorial, & Gubernatorial Elections in the U.S. Counties
- Slovak Election Data Project
- Spanish Electoral Archive
- U.S. House Primary Election Results (1956-2010)
- U.S. House Primary Election Results (2012-2018)
- U.S. Polling Places
- UK Election Statistics
- UK House of Commons Election Results at Constituency Level
- US Presidential Elections
- Voter Turnout Database
- African Relational Pro-Government Militia Dataset
- AfroGrid
- Aid Worker Security Database
- AidData
- Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions
- Anatomy of Resistance Campaigns
- Armed Group Dataset
- Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project
- Authoritarian Ruling Elites Database
- Border Crossings of the World Dataset
- Certificates of Competency for Nominees to be Chiefs of Mission
- Chance-Corrected Measures of Foreign Policy Similarity
- Change in Source of Leader Support
- Colonial Dates Dataset
- Colpus Regime Data
- Commercial Military Actor Database
- Conflict Catalog
- Contemporary Slavery in Armed Conflict
- Correlates of War
- Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative
- Coup D'état Project
- Coups in the World
- Cross-Cutting Cleavage Dataset
- Database on Suicide Attacks
- De Facto States in International Politics
- Deadly Electoral Conflict Dataset
- Disaggregated defense spending
- Disaggregated Military Expenditure
- Displacement Locations
- Distribution of Military Capabilities
- Domestic Terrorist Victims dataset
- Electoral Contention and Violence
- Forcibly Displaced Populations
- Foreign Fighter Observation Set
- Foundations of Rebel Group Emergence
- Fragile States Index
- From Empire to Nation-State
- Frozen conflicts in world politics
- Gender and Diplomatic Representation
- Geocoded Peacekeeping Operations
- Geopolitical Risk Index
- Gibler-Miller-Little Militarized Interstate Dispute
- Girl Child Soldier Dataset
- Global Military Spending Dataset
- Global Terrorism Database
- Global Transitional Justice Dataset
- Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion
- High Casualty Terrorist Bombings
- Historical Conflict Event Dataset
- Historical terrorist groups
- Historical Varieties of Democracy
- Humanitarian Organisations Dataset
- Ill-Treatment and Torture
- Implementation of Pacts
- International Crisis Behaviors Events
- International Cyber Expression Dataset
- International Military Intervention
- International Military Training Activities Database-USA
- International Peace Institute Peacekeeping Database
- International Political Economy Data Resource
- International Sanctions Termination
- Interstate War Battle dataset
- Interwar Period International Trade in Arms data
- Jihadi Plots in Europe Dataset
- Jihadi Plots in the West
- Joint Military Exercises Dataset
- Konstanz One-Sided Violence Event Dataset
- Latent Human Rights Protection Scores
- Latin American Guerrillas Dataset
- Leaders’ Willingness to Use Force
- Major Episodes of Political Violence
- Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database
- Measuring the Impacts of Colonialism
- Memberships in Conventional Intergovernmental Organizations
- Militant Group Electoral Participation Dataset
- Militarized Compellent Threats
- Militarized Interstate Confrontation Dataset
- Militarized Interstate Events
- Military Intervention Project
- Military Mutinies and Defections Database
- Military Purges in Dictatorships
- Minorities at Risk
- Native American Conflict History
- Nonviolent & Violent Campaigns and Outcomes
- Nuclear Production Capabilities Dataset
- Parliamentary Deployment Votes Database
- Peace Accords Matrix Implementation
- Peace Agreement Database
- Peace Negotiations in Civil Conflicts
- Peaceful Resolution of Territorial Disputes
- Peacekeeping and the Peacekept
- PeaceKeeping Operations Corpus
- Police Reforms in Peace Agreements
- Political Apology database
- Political Risk Insurance
- Political Settlements
- Political Terror Scale
- Power-Sharing Event Dataset
- Pro-Government Militias Database
- Quantified Political Relationships
- Rebel Appeals and Incentives Dataset
- Rebel Contraband Dataset
- Rebel Foreign Fighter Dataset
- Rebel Human Rights Violations
- Rebel Organization Leaders Database
- Regular Turnover Details
- Reputation of Terror Groups
- Revolutionary Leaders and Revolutions
- Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence
- Rising Powers Diplomatic Network
- Rulers, Elections, and Irregular Governance
- Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict
- Significant Incidents Against Americans Abroad
- Social Conflict Analysis Database
- State Failure Problem Set
- State Fragility Index
- State Security Forces dataset
- Tasks Assigned to Missions in their Mandates
- Temporally Extended, Regular, Reproducible International Event Records
- Terrorist and Insurgent Organization Social Services
- The Affinity of Nations: Similarity of State Voting Positions in the UNGA
- The Cease-Fires Data Set
- The CIRI Human Rights Dataset
- The Civil Conflict Ceasefire dataset
- The Dyadic Cyber Incident and Dispute Data
- The Logic of Political Survival
- Threat and Imposition of Sanctions
- UCDP Peacemakers at Risk
- UN Peace Mission Mandates
- UN Targeted Sanctions
- United Nations General Assembly Voting Data
- United Nations Security Council membership
- Uppsala Conflict Data Program
- US global military deployments
- Warring-States Japan Battle Data
- Water-Related Intrastate Conflict and Cooperation
- Women’s Activities in Armed Rebellion
- Women's Participation in NATO Forces and Operations
- Women’s Rights Recommendations Digital Database
- BuzzFeed News “Trending” Strip
- Comparative Agendas Project: Media
- Data on washingtonpost.com alerts
- Political Advertisements from Facebook
- Global Media Freedom Dataset
- Media System Freedom
- Newspaper presidential endorsements
- Political TV Ad Archive
- Quotebank: A Corpus of Quotations from a Decade of News
- Snap Political Ads Library
- Wesleyan Media Project: Media Advertising
- World Press Freedom Index
- 3P Anti-trafficking Policy Index
- A Comprehensive Dataset of U.S. Federal Laws
- Abortion Law Database
- Bilateral Labor Agreements Dataset
- Canadian Government Expenditures
- Citizenship Regime Inclusiveness Index
- Citizenship Regime Inclusiveness Index 2.0
- Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset
- Comparative Welfare States Data Set
- Correlates of State Policy
- Countries' Agri-Environmental Policies Database
- COVID-19 vaccine policies
- Education Policies and Systems across Modern History
- EUPROPS
- fRDB-IZA Social Reforms Database
- Global Abortion Policies Database
- Global Visa Cost Dataset
- Global Work-Injury Policy Dataset
- Government Open Source Software Policies
- Government Revenue Dataset
- Immigrant Social Rights Dataset
- Immigration Policies in Comparison
- Infrastructure Database
- Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset
- Legislative decision-making in the European Union
- Legislative Progression in the American States
- Multiculturalism Policy Index
- Myers Abortion Facility Database
- National Database of Childcare Prices
- Policy complexity in the European Union
- Public Plans Database
- Social Citizenship Indicator Program
- Social Assistance, Politics, and Institutions database
- Social Security Database
- State-by-State Spending on Kids
- State Policy Innovation and Diffusion
- Studying Immigrant Policy One Law at a Time
- Tax Introduction Database
- The European pension politics dataset
- The Regulation of Labor
- Trans Rights Indicator Project
- Working Time Regulation
- World Education Reform Database
- An Automated Database of the European Parliament
- Archigos: A Data Base on Leaders 1875-2004
- Australian Candidate Study
- Career Moves of Former Danish Ministers and Permanent Secretaries
- Comparative Candidates Survey
- Global Leader Ideology
- Global Populism Database
- Leader Experience and Attribute Descriptions
- Political experience of national leaders
- Portuguese Candidates Survey
- Portuguese MPs Survey
- Debates in the Council of the European Union
- EUSpeech
- European Central Bank: Speeches data
- German Political Speeches Corpus and Visualization
- GermaParl Corpus of Parliamentary Protocols
- Hansard Speeches and Sentiment
- MAPLE Parliamentary Datasets
- ParlEE Plenary Speeches
- Parliamentary communication in the German Bundestag
- Parliamentary Speeches in Ireland
- ParlQuestionTime
- parlScot
- ParlSpeech
- ParlSpeech V2
- Swedish parliamentary proceedings
- The UN Security Council Debates
- United Nations General Debate Corpus
- Crowd Counting Consortium Dataset
- European Protest and Coercion Data
- Historical Social Conflict Database
- Lankina Russian Protest-Event Dataset
- Mass Mobilization Protest Data
- Political Conflict and Democracy: Protest Events
- Protest events
- Urban Social Disorder
- Aqueduct
- Climate Action Tracker
- Climate change in the contiguous United States
- Climate Policy Database
- Energy Policy Tracker
- Environmental Performance Index
- Global Oil & Gas Features Database
- Global Power Plant Database
- International Environmental Agreements Database
- TRade & ENvironment Database
- World Database on Protected Areas
- Anti-Refugee Violence and Social Unrest in Germany
- Cohort Fertility and Education Database
- Campaign Finance Law Across the Nation
- Comparative dataset on socio-cultural, political and legal indicators
- Database of Masculine and Feminine Words
- Ethnic Power Relations
- Extended State History Index
- Gender and Religious Bias in the Indian Judiciary
- Geocoded Medicaid office locations in the United States
- Global Abortion Incidence Dataset
- Global Dual Citizenship Database
- Government Religious Preference
- Historical Index of Ethnic Fractionalization
- Hong Kong Political Prisoners
- Human Capital Index
- Incarceration Trends Dataset
- KOF Globalization Index
- LocalView Public Meetings Database
- Misinformation Intervention Database
- Missing Migrants Project
- Moral Machine
- Political Conflict and Democracy: Contentious Episodes
- Political Conflict and Democracy: Public Debates
- Private Prisons
- Raw data from online personality tests
- Refugee Resettlement Data
- Regional Authority Index
- Religion Adherence Data
- Serious Nuclear and Radiological Incidents
- Social Capital Atlas
- State Antiquity Index
- State Networks
- World Migration Matrix
- Awesome Public Datasets
- Bank for International Settlements
- Catalog of Administrative Data Sets
- Charles Stewart's Congressional Data Page
- Data Is Plural — Structured Archive (hundreds of datasets, political and non-political)
- Data Resources for Studies in Comparative Politics
- Datasets and open source projects related to Climate Change
- Datasets for development economists
- Datasets for empirical development economists
- Datasets with text data for use in Natural Language Processing
- Demscore
- Economic Data freely available online
- Economic databases
- European Representative Democracy Data Archive
- Google Dataset Search
- ILOSTAT
- Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
- International IDEA
- International Monetary Fund
- Investor Amnesia: Historical Data Library
- Large datasets for social science, genomics and medicine
- Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research: Online Databases
- Medieval and Early Modern Data Bank
- MIT Election Data and Science Lab
- Open datasets
- Oxford Supertracker: The Global Directory for COVID Policy Trackers
- Oxford Supertracker: The Global Directory for COVID Surveys
- Paul Hensel's International Relations Data Site
- Political Science Data
- Team Populism
- Quantitative Social Science Data
- American Journal of Political Science
- American Political Science Review
- Brazilian Political Science Review
- British Journal of Political Science
- Comparative Political Studies
- Foreign Policy Analysis
- International Interactions
- International Organization
- International Security
- Italian Political Science Review
- Japanese Journal of Political Science
- Journal of Experimental Political Science
- Journal of Human Rights
- Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy
- Journal of Politics
- Journal of Public Policy
- Legislative Studies Quarterly
- Perspectives on Politics
- Political Analysis
- Political Behavior
- Political Science Research and Methods
- Public Administration
- Research & Politics
- Security Studies
- State Politics & Policy Quarterly
- World Politics
For help and dataset suggestions, thanks to Daniel Bischof, Jon H. Fiva, Martijn Schoonvelde, Shiro Kuriwaki, Niclas Darville, Alexey Gridnev, Anne-Kathrin Kreft, Feodor Snagovsky, Joe Noonan, Michael Strebel, Felix Haass, Simon Straubinger, Bjørn Høyland and Agnar Freyr Helgason. Several of the datasets added to the list over the years are found via the great newsletter Data Is Plural by Jeremy Singer-Vine.