This data collection contains electoral and demographic data for Massachusetts counties and cities during 1848-1876. The data for this collection were compiled to study electoral changes in Massachusetts politics during the Civil War period and to link the changes to socioeconomic determinants of support for the Republican and Democratic parties. Specific variables include number of voters for specific years and demographic information such as number of males and females and number of males employed in certain trades. Electoral data consists of election results.

Topics Covered: Marathon Bombings, Gubernatorial race, MA Senators

The Women's Voter Register Dataset is created from Election Department registers used to register women voters in 1920 after the passage of the 19th Amendment. The dataset contains information about newly registered women voters including name, address, place of birth, occupation, place of work, naturalization information, and closest male relative. This dataset is in progress and is updated periodically as additional voter registers are transcribed.

PROBLEM AND OPPORTUNITY In the United States, voting is largely a private matter. A registered voter is given a randomized ballot form or machine to prevent linkage between their voting choices and their identity. This disconnect supports confidence in the election process, but it provides obstacles to an election's analysis. A common solution is to field exit polls, interviewing voters immediately after leaving their polling location. This method is rife with bias, however, and functionally limited in direct demographics data collected. For the 2020 general election, though, most states published their election results for each voting location. These publications were additionally supported by the geographical areas assigned to each location, the voting precincts. As a result, geographic processing can now be applied to project precinct election results onto Census block groups. While precinct have few demographic traits directly, their geographies have characteristics that make them projectable onto U.S. Census geographies. Both state voting precincts and U.S. Census block groups: are exclusive, and do not overlap are adjacent, fully covering their corresponding state and potentially county have roughly the same size in area, population and voter presence Analytically, a projection of local demographics does not allow conclusions about voters themselves. However, the dataset does allow statements related to the geographies that yield voting behavior. One could say, for example, that an area dominated by a particular voting pattern would have mean traits of age, race, income or household structure. The dataset that results from this programming provides voting results allocated by Census block groups. The block group identifier can be joined to Census Decennial and American Community Survey demographic estimates. DATA SOURCES The state election results and geographies have been compiled by Voting and Election Science team on Harvard's dataverse. State voting precincts lie within state and county boundaries. The Census Bureau, on the other hand, publishes its estimates across a variety of geographic definitions including a hierarchy of states, counties, census tracts and block groups. Their definitions can be found here. The geometric shapefiles for each block group are available here. The lowest level of this geography changes often and can obsolesce before the next census survey (Decennial or American Community Survey programs). The second to lowest census level, block groups, have the benefit of both granularity and stability however. The 2020 Decennial survey details US demographics into 217,740 block groups with between a few hundred and a few thousand people. Dataset Structure The dataset's columns include: Column Definition BLOCKGROUP_GEOID 12 digit primary key. Census GEOID of the block group row. This code concatenates: 2 digit state 3 digit county within state 6 digit Census Tract identifier 1 digit Census Block Group identifier within tract STATE State abbreviation, redundent with 2 digit state FIPS code above REP Votes for Republican party candidate for president DEM Votes for Democratic party candidate for president LIB Votes for Libertarian party candidate for president OTH Votes for presidential candidates other than Republican, Democratic or Libertarian AREA square kilometers of area associated with this block group GAP total area of the block group, net of area attributed to voting precincts PRECINCTS Number of voting precincts that intersect this block group ASSUMPTIONS, NOTES AND CONCERNS: Votes are attributed based upon the proportion of the precinct's area that intersects the corresponding block group. Alternative methods are left to the analyst's initiative. 50 states and the District of Columbia are in scope as those U.S. possessions voting in the general election for the U.S. Presidency. Three states did not report their results at the precinct level: South Dakota, Kentucky and West Virginia. A dummy block group is added for each of these states to maintain national totals. These states represent 2.1% of all votes cast. Counties are commonly coded using FIPS codes. However, each election result file may have the county field named differently. Also, three states do not share county definitions - Delaware, Massachusetts, Alaska and the District of Columbia. Block groups may be used to capture geographies that do not have population like bodies of water. As a result, block groups without intersection voting precincts are not uncommon. In the U.S., elections are administered at a state level with the Federal Elections Commission compiling state totals against the Electoral College weights. The states have liberty, though, to define and change their own voting precincts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_precinct. The Census Bureau... Visit https://dataone.org/datasets/sha256%3A05707c1dc04a814129f751937a6ea56b08413546b18b351a85bc96da16a7f8b5 for complete metadata about this dataset.

Voters from the state of Massachusetts have been involved in all 59 U.S. presidential elections, and have voted for the overall winning candidate on 39 occasions, giving a success rate of 66 percent. Generally speaking, Massachusetts has voted for the more liberal candidate throughout its electoral history, voting for the Federalist, Whig and Republican Party nominees throughout most of the nineteenth century, and then switching to the Democratic Party in the twentieth century. Since 1928, Massachusetts has voted for the Democratic nominee in 20 out of 24 elections, breaking with this tradition only when voting for Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan in each of their landslide victories. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden won with almost two thirds of the popular vote. Bay State presidents A total of four U.S. presidents have been born in Massachusetts; these were both John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams, John F. Kennedy, and George H. W. Bush (although his family moved to Connecticut the year after his birth); of these four, Bush was the only who failed to win in his birth state, however his competitor, Michael Dukakis, was also a Massachusetts native and was the state governor at the time. Calvin Coolidge, while born and raised in Vermont, spent most of his adulthood and political career in Massachusetts, and was a resident there when ascending to the presidency. Massachusetts was also the birth or home state of several losing candidates, such as Rufus King, Daniel Webster or John Kerry, all of whom carried Massachusetts in their respective elections; while former Governor Mitt Romney was the only major party nominee not to win the state while living there. Electoral vote allocation As one of the original thirteen colonies, Massachusetts had a high share of the electoral college votes in early years, rising to 22 votes in the 1810s. This number then fluctuated throughout most of the nineteenth century, between twelve and 15 votes, before rising to 18 votes in the 1910s and 1920s. In the past hundred years, due to a slower population growth rate than in other states, Massachusetts' allocation of electoral votes has gradually fallen to eleven votes in the past few elections, and it is expected to stay at this level in the 2024 election.

Results for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate Special Election Poll are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 589 Massachusetts registered voters. Telephone interviews were conducted by landline (n=411) and cell phone (n=178). The survey was conducted by RKM Research and Communications (RKM). Interviews were conducted in English, March 2-5, 2013. The survey was administered using a computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) system. The CATI system allows data to be entered directly into a computerized database as interviews are conducted. A central polling facility in Portsmouth, New Hampshire was used to administer the survey. All interviews were conducted by paid, trained and professionally supervised interviewers.

This year, Massachusetts will be offering registered voters the chance to cast their ballots prior to Election Day, November 8th, 2016. Early voting will be available at five (5) locations in the City of Cambridge. This alternate voting option will be available from October 24th to November 4th, for all registered voters of the City of Cambridge. For more information including Early Voting by mail, please visit the Cambridge Election Commission, 51 Inman Street, call (617)349-4361 or visit our website at www.cambridgema.gov/election

Petition subject: Against slave hunting Original: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:11858640 Date of creation: (unknown) Petition location: Manchester Legislator, committee, or address that the petition was sent to: John Prince, Essex; committee on federal relations Selected signatures:Henry Elwell Jr.William B. SturgisEdward N. Andrews Actions taken on dates: 1860-02-02,1860-02-03 Legislative action: Received in the House on February 2, 1860 and referred to the committee on federal relations and sent for concurrence and received in the Senate on February 3, 1860 and concurred Total signatures: 456 Legislative action summary: Received, referred, sent, received, concurred Legal voter signatures (males not identified as non-legal): 166 Female signatures: 134 Other male signatures: 3 Unidentified signatures: 153 Female only signatures: No Identifications of signatories: citizens, legal voters, other adults, [females], [other males], ["others"] Prayer format was printed vs. manuscript: Printed Signatory column format: column separated Additional non-petition or unrelated documents available at archive: no additional documents Additional archivist notes: Reverend next to signatures; large number of initials Location of the petition at the Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth: Senate Unpassed 1860, leave to withdraw Acknowledgements: Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-5105612), Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University, Institutional Development Initiative at Harvard University, and Harvard University Library.