Abstract

The L2 Voter and Demographic data is current as of May 31 2022. The data includes demographic and voter history tables for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The dataset is built from publicly available government records about voter registration and election participation. These records indicate whether a person voted in an election or not, but they do not record whom that person voted for. Voter registration and election participation data are augmented by demographic information from outside data sources.

Methodology

To create this file, L2 processes registered voter data on an ongoing basis for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with refreshes of the underlying state voter data typically at least every six months and refreshes of telephone numbers and National Change of Address processing approximately every 30 to 60 days. These data are standardized and enhanced with propriety commercial data and modeling codes and consist of approximately 185,000,000 records nationwide.

Usage

For each state, there are two main tables: demographic and voter history. The demographic and voter tables can be joined on the 'LALVOTERID' variable. One can also use the 'LALVOTERID' variable to link the L2 Voter and Demographic data with the L2 Commercial data.

The 'LALVOTERID' variable can also be used to validate the state. For example, let's look at the 'LALVOTERID' LALCA123456789. The characters in the fourth and fifth positions of this identifier are 'CA' (California). The second way to validate the state is by using the RESIDENCE_ADDRESSES_STATE, which should have a value of 'CA' (California).

The date appended to each table name represents when the data was last updated.

The demographic files use 691 consistent variables. For more information about these variables, see 2021-11-03-L2-Voter-Demographic-File-Layout.xlsx.

The voter history files have different variables depending on the state. The ***2022-05-31-L2-Voter-Data-Dictionaries.tar.gz ***file expands into a folder with .csv data dictionaries for each state's demographic and voter files. While the demographic file data dictionaries should complement the 2021-11-03-L2-Voter-Demographic-File-Layout.xlsx file, the voter file data dictionaries will be unique to each state.

**JOINED TABLES: **

Additionally, each state has a "COMPLETE-VM1" table which has demographics and vote history from multiple years stacked on top of each other. There is an additional column in these tables called "L2-filename" which has the L2 filename from which the data were drawn, and within this file name is the date of the voter file snapshot.

Abstract

The L2 Voter and Demographic Dataset includes demographic and voter history tables for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The dataset is built from publicly available government records about voter registration and election participation. These records indicate whether a person voted in an election or not, but they do not record whom that person voted for. Voter registration and election participation data are augmented by demographic information from outside data sources.

Methodology

To create this file, L2 processes registered voter data on an ongoing basis for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with refreshes of the underlying state voter data typically at least every six months and refreshes of telephone numbers and National Change of Address processing approximately every 30 to 60 days. These data are standardized and enhanced with propriety commercial data and modeling codes and consist of approximately 185,000,000 records nationwide.

Usage

For each state, there are two available tables: demographic and voter history. The demographic and voter tables can be joined on the LALVOTERIDvariable. One can also use the LALVOTERIDvariable to link the L2 Voter and Demographic Dataset with the L2 Consumer Dataset.

In addition, the LALVOTERIDvariable can be used to validate the state. For example, let's look at the LALVOTERID = LALCA3169443. The characters in the fourth and fifth positions of this identifier are 'CA' (California). The second way to validate the state is by using the RESIDENCE_ADDRESSES_STATEvariable, which should have a value of 'CA' (California).

The date appended to each table name represents when the data was last updated. These dates will differ state by state because states update their voter files at different cadences.

The demographic files use 698 consistent variables. For more information about these variables, see 2025-01-10-VM2-File-Layout.xlsx.

The voter history files have different variables depending on the state. The ***2025-08-05-L2-Voter-Dictionaries.tar.gz file contains .csv data dictionaries for each state's demographic and voter files. While the demographic file data dictionaries should mirror the 2025-01-10-VM2-File-Layout.xlsx*** file, the voter file data dictionaries will be unique to each state.

***2025-04-24-National-File-Notes.pdf ***contains L2 Voter and Demographic Dataset ("National File") release notes from 2018 to 2025.

***2025-08-05-L2-Voter-Fill-Rate.tar.gz ***contains .tab files tracking the percent of non-null values for any given field.

Bulk Data Access

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DataMapping Tool

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