This study is part of the American National Election Study (ANES), a time-series collection of national surveys fielded continuously since 1948. The American National Election Studies are designed to present data on Americans' social backgrounds, enduring political predispositions, social and political values, perceptions and evaluations of groups and candidates, opinions on questions of public policy, and participation in political life. As with all Time Series studies conducted during years of presidential elections, respondents were interviewed during the two months preceding the November election (Pre-election interview), and then re-interviewed during the two months following the election (Post-election interview). Like its predecessors, the 2020 ANES was divided between questions necessary for tracking long-term trends and questions necessary to understand the particular political moment of 2020. The study maintains and extends the ANES time-series 'core' by collecting data on Americans' basic political beliefs, allegiances, and behaviors, which are so critical to a general understanding of politics that they are monitored at every election, no matter the nature of the specific campaign or the broader setting. This 2020 ANES study features a fresh cross-sectional sample, with respondents randomly assigned to one of three sequential mode groups: web only, mixed web (i.e., web and phone), and mixed video (i.e., video, web, and phone). The new content for the 2020 pre-election survey includes coronavirus pandemic, election integrity, corruption, impeachment, immigration and democratic norms. The pre-election survey also includes protests and unrest over policing and racism. The new content for the 2020 post-election survey includes voting experiences, anti-elitism, faith in experts or science, climate change, gun control, opioids, rural-urban identity, international trade, transgender military service, social media usage, misinformation, perceptions of foreign countries and group empathy. Phone and video interviews were conducted by trained interviewers using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) software on computers. Unlike in earlier years, the 2020 ANES did not use computer-assisted self interviewing (CASI) during any part of the interviewer-administered modes (video and phone). Rather, in interviewer-administered modes, all questions were read out loud to respondents, and respondents also provided their answers orally. Demographic variables include respondent age, education level, political affiliation, race/ethnicity, marital status, and family composition.

From the ANES website: "The ANES Project Staff has merged into a single data file cases and variables from each of the biennial American National Election Studies conducted since 1948. This file is called the ANES Cumulative Data File. Questions that have been asked in three or more Election Studies usually appear in the Cumulative Data File. The variables are coded in a comparable fashion across years. The version of the Cumulative Data File that is currently available pools data through the 2004 National Election Study to yield 47,438 cases. Note that the Cumulative Data File only includes data from the Time Series data collections (that is the Pre-/Post-Election Study in presidential election years and the Post-Election Study in midterm years). Data from other ANES studies, such as the 1984 Continuous Monitoring Study, the 1988 Super Tuesday Study, or the 1988-90-92 Senate Election Study, are not included in the Cumulative Data File."

Religion variables include religious affiliation, church attendance, subjective importance of religion, beliefs about the Bible, and attitudes toward school prayer.

For additional information on this file, see the "https://electionstudies.org/" Target="_blank">American National Election Studies website:

This study is part of the American National Election Study (ANES), a time-series collection of national surveys fielded continuously since 1948. The American National Election Studies are designed to present data on Americans' social backgrounds, enduring political predispositions, social and political values, perceptions and evaluations of groups and candidates, opinions on questions of public policy, and participation in political life. As with all Time Series studies conducted during years of presidential elections, respondents were interviewed during the two months preceding the November election (Pre-election interview), and then re-interviewed during the two months following the election (Post-election interview). Like its predecessors, the 2012 ANES was divided between questions necessary for tracking long-term trends and questions necessary to understand the particular political moment of 2012. The study maintains and extends the ANES time-series 'core' by collecting data on Americans' basic political beliefs, allegiances, and behaviors, which are so critical to a general understanding of politics that they are monitored at every election, no matter the nature of the specific campaign or the broader setting. For the first time in the ANES Time Series history, face-to-face interviewing was supplemented in 2012 with data collection on the Internet. Data collection was conducted in the two modes independently, using separate samples. While face-to-face (FTF) respondents were administered the single pre-election interview and single post-election interview traditional to Time Series presidential-election-year studies, for the internet sample the same questions were administered over a total of four shorter online interviews, two pre-election and two post-election. Web-administered cases constituted a representative sample separate from the face-to-face sample and were drawn from panel members of GfK Knowledge Networks. The face-to-face (FTF) sample of fresh cross-section cases featured oversamples of African-Americans and Hispanics. For the first time in the ANES Time Series, FTF respondents were administered CAPI interviews programmed as instruments on handheld tablets, which were employed by interviewers using touchscreen, stylus, attached keyboard or any combination of entry modes according to interviewer preference. In both the pre-election and post-election FTF interviews a special CASI (Computer Assisted Self-Interviewing) segment was conducted. In addition to content on electoral participation, voting behavior, and public opinion, the 2012 ANES Time Series Study contains questions about areas such as media exposure, cognitive style, and values and predispositions. Several items were measured on the ANES for the first time, including "Big Five" personality traits using the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), skin tone observations made by interviewers in the face-to-face study, and a vocabulary test from the General Social Survey called "Wordsum." The Post-Election interview also included Module 4 from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). Demographic variables include respondent age, education level, political affiliation, race/ethnicity, marital status, and family composition.

In the ANES Time Series Cumulative Data File, the project staff have merged into a single file all cross-section cases and variables for select questions from the ANES Time Series studies conducted since 1948. Questions that have been asked in three or more Time Series studies are eligible for inclusion, with variables recoded as necessary for comparability across years.

The data track political attitudes and behaviors across the decades, including attitudes about religion. This dataset is unique given its size and comprehensive assessment of politics and religion over time. For information about the structure of the cumulative file, please see the notes listed on this page.

The ANES 2020-2022 Social Media Study was a two-wave survey before and after the 2020 presidential election and a third survey following the 2022 midterm elections in the United States. Data from these surveys are available as a public use file from the American National Election Studies (ANES) website. The three questionnaires have largely the same content, affording repeated measures of the same constructs. The questionnaire covers voter turnout and candidate choice in the 2020 presidential primaries and general election, the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, feeling thermometers, feelings about how things are going in the country, trust in institutions, political knowledge and misinformation, political participation, political stereotyping, political diversity of social networks, and campaign/policy issues including health insurance, immigration, guns, and climate change.

The 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study is a telephone-recruited Internet panel with two cohorts recruited using nearly identical methods. The first cohort was recruited in late 2007 using random-digit-dialing (RDD) methods common to telephone surveys. Prospective respondents were offered $10 per month to complete surveys on the Internet each month for 21 months, from January 2008 through September 2009. Those without a computer and Internet service were offered a free web appliance, MSN TV 2, and free Internet service for the duration of the study. The second cohort was recruited the same way in the summer of 2008 and asked to join the panel beginning in September 2008. The recruitment interview was conducted by telephone in nearly all cases. A small number of respondents completed the recruitment survey on the Internet after failing to complete a telephone interview. Before the first monthly survey, most respondents also completed an online profile survey consisting primarily of demographic questions. To minimize panel attrition and conditioning effects, only 7 of the 21 monthly surveys are about politics. Other surveys are about a variety of non-political topics. The panelists answered political questions prepared by ANES in January, February, June, September, October, and November 2008. With certainty, the panel answered more political questions in May 2009. Note that the 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study is entirely separate from the 2008 ANES Time Series study, which was conducted using the traditional ANES method of face-to-face interviews before and after the 2008 election. Although there are a few questions common to both studies, the samples and methods are different. For further details, see the User Guide. Complete documentation is available on the ANES Web site http://www.electionstudies.org .

The newest dataset has recoded values for presidential vote as well as folded binary Independent variables for partisan affiliation. Feel free to email me if you have any questions regarding the coding of the new variables.

This 2024 announcement updates prior releases of Lau and Redlawsk’s operationalization of “correct voting” in U.S. presidential elections utilizing the quadrennial ANES surveys, now extending available data to the 2020 election. This folder contains 13 relatively small spss system files (e.g., CorVt72.sav, CorVt76.sav, etc.), one for each presidential year election study from 1972 through 2020 – plus one big combined system file including data from all 13 elections. Each file contains 11 variables: (Election) Year, CaseID (from the ANES survey), (survey) Mode, four slightly different estimates of which candidate we calculate is the correct choice for each respondent (USCorCand, UMCorCand, WSCorCand, and WMCorCand), and four slightly different estimates of whether the respondent reported voting for that “correct” candidate (CorrVtUS, CorrVtUM, CorrVtWS, and CorrVtWM). The US, UM, WS, and WM prefixes and suffixes refer to Unweighted Sums, Unweighted Means, Weighted Sums, and Weighted Means, respectively. As in the past, we only provide estimates for respondents with both pre- and post-election surveys. Unlike past releases, however, the data now includes an indicator of survey mode, and we now provide estimates for respondents interviewed with all available survey modes, not just the tradition face-to-face mode. This greatly increases the number of respondents with correct voting estimates from the 2000, 2012, 2016, and of course 2020 studies (when because of covid no face-to-face interviews were conducted). Fortunately, eyeballing this new data (see Correct Voting Summary Data.docx), there do not appear to be any significant mode differences beyond what can be explained by sampling error.

This collection pools common variables from each of the biennial National Election Studies conducted since 1948 up until 2012. The election studies are designed to present data on Americans' social backgrounds, enduring political predispositions, social and political values, perceptions and evaluations of groups and candidates, opinions on questions of public policy, and participation in political life. The data provided in this cumulative file include a series of demographic variables and measures of social structure, partisanship, candidate evaluation, retrospective and incumbent presidential evaluation, public opinion, ideological support for the political system, mass media usage, and egalitarianism and post-materialism. Additional items provide measures of political activity, participation, and involvement, and voting behavior and registration, including results of voter validation efforts.

This study is part of the American National Election Study (ANES), a time-series collection of national surveys fielded continuously since 1948. The American National Election Studies are designed to present data on Americans' social backgrounds, enduring political predispositions, social and political values, perceptions and evaluations of groups and candidates, opinions on questions of public policy, and participation in political life. As with all Time Series studies conducted during years of presidential elections, respondents were interviewed during the two months preceding the November election (Pre-election interview), and then re-interviewed during the two months following the election (Post-election interview). Like its predecessors, the 2016 ANES was divided between questions necessary for tracking long-term trends and questions necessary to understand the particular political moment of 2016. The study maintains and extends the ANES time-series 'core' by collecting data on Americans' basic political beliefs, allegiances, and behaviors, which are so critical to a general understanding of politics that they are monitored at every election, no matter the nature of the specific campaign or the broader setting. This 2016 ANES study features a dual-mode design with both traditional face-to-face interviewing (n=1,181) and surveys conducted on the Internet (n=3,090), and a total sample size of 4,271. In addition to content on electoral participation, voting behavior, and public opinion, the 2016 ANES Time Series Study contains questions about areas such as media exposure, cognitive style, and values and predispositions. Several items first measured on the 2012 ANES study were again asked, including "Big Five" personality traits using the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), and skin tone observations made by interviewers in the face-to-face study. For the first time, ANES has collected supplemental data directly from respondents' Facebook accounts. The post-election interview also included Module 5 from the Comparative Study of Electorial Systems (CSES), exploring themes in populism, perceptions on elites, corruption, and attitudes towards representative democracy. Face-to-face interviews were conducted by trained interviewers using computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) software on laptop computers. During a portion of the face-to-face interview, the respondent answered certain sensitive questions on the laptop computer directly, without the interviewer's participation (known as computer assisted self-interviewing (CASI)). Internet questionnaires could be completed anywhere the respondent had access to the Internet, on a computer or on a mobile device. Respondents were only eligible to compete the survey in the mode for which they were sampled. Demographic variables include respondent age, education level, political affiliation, race/ethnicity, marital status, and family composition.

This study is part of a time-series collection of national surveys fielded continuously since 1948. The election studies are designed to present data on Americans' social backgrounds, enduring political predispositions, social and political values, perceptions and evaluations of groups and candidates, opinions on questions of public policy, and participation in political life. Four areas were targeted for special attention: new measurement of party identification, the measurement of voter attitudes concerning issues of public policy, new content concerning public perceptions of and responses to political leadership, and the exploration of social networks in the crystallization of the vote choice. Special-interest and topical content includes questions on the proposed 30% tax cut, new questions on campaign contributions and party identification, new retrospective and prospective evaluations of the economy, new issue scales on defense spending and U.S. foreign policy toward Russia, a new abortion question, and the introduction to the ANES time series of 'traits and affects' measures of perception and response regarding political leadership. Besides representing a traditional pre-post election study, the two waves of the 1980 ANES Time Series Study were simultaneously components of a larger project consisting of 8 integrated survey data collections carried out throughout 1980 and scheduled at strategically chosen time periods in the course of the election year, along with vote validation and contextual data. Other studies in the project included the four-wave 1980 Major Panel Study [ICPSR 35120], and a 2-wave minor panel that is available only in the ANES 1980 Merged File [ICPSR 35119], which combines into a single dataset all of the ANES data collected in 1980. The National Election Studies Board established a 1980 Presidential Elections Committee that consisted of three Board members (Merrill Shanks, John Jackson, David Sears) and three additional scholars (Richard S. Brody, Jack Dennis, Donald R. Kinder). This committee, along with the Center for Political Studies project staff, was responsible for the planning of the year-long study. The Pre- and Post-Election Surveys file contains the traditional election survey data. Contextual measures are provided along with the survey data, and include election returns, interest group ratings of incumbents, and Federal Election Commission campaign contribution data.

To serve the research needs of social scientists, teachers, students, policy makers and journalists, the ANES produces high quality data from its own surveys on voting, public opinion, and political participation. Central to this mission is the active involvement of the ANES research community in all phases of the project. Questionnaires are distributed pre-election and post-election each presidential cycle.

Political knowledge research faces a problem, perhaps even a crisis. For two decades, the American National Election Studies asked open-ended questions about political knowledge and coded answers using procedures that are neither reliable nor replicable and that were never shown to be optimally valid. Consequently, conclusions based on these widely used measures of the public's competence are in doubt. This paper presents several new and overdue methodological improvements: coding knowledge data using formal and specific coding rules based on a substantive rationale for the validity of the codes, recognizing partially correct answers, using multiple coders working independently, using machine coding, and testing reliability and validity. The new methods are an improvement because they are transparent and replicable and they produce valid and extremely reliable knowledge data. Further, machine coding produces codes nearly identical to those from a team of human coders, at much lower cost.

The ANES 2012 Time Series Study is the 29th study in a series of election studies conducted during years of Presidential elections since 1948 (the "ANES Time Series"). As with all Time Series studies conducted during years of presidential elections, respondents were interviewed during the two months preceding the November election (Pre-election interview), and then re-interviewed during the two months following the election (Post-election interview).

For the first time in Time Series history, face-to-face interviewing was supplemented with data collection on the Internet. Data collection was conducted in the two modes independently, using separate samples. For the face-to-face mode, all sampled persons were interviewed in person using Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI), which also incorporated an interview segment in each wave that was self-administered (CASI). For the Internet mode, all study participants were members of the KnowledgePanel, a panel of regular survey participants administered by GfK (formerly Knowledge Networks).

(ANES. 2014. User's Guide and Codebook for the ANES 2012 Time Series Study. Ann Arbor, MI and Palo Alto, CA: the University of Michigan and Stanford University.)

Logistic regression model for American National Election Studies (ANES) data. The model aims to predict voter intention for Clinton based on party identification and its interaction with age.

Abstract (en): These data are being released as a preliminary version to facilitate early access to the study for research purposes. This collection has not been fully processed by ICPSR at this time, and data are released in the format provided by the principal investigators. As the study is processed and given enhanced features by ICPSR in the future, users will be able to download the updated versions of the study. Please report any data errors or problems to user support, and we will work with you to resolve any data-related issues. The American National Election Study (ANES): 2016 Pilot Study sought to test new instrumentation under consideration for potential inclusion in the ANES 2016 Time Series Study, as well as future ANES studies. Much of the content is based on proposals from the ANES user community submitted through the Online Commons page, found on the ANES home page. The survey included questions about preferences in the presidential primary, stereotyping, the economy, discrimination, race and racial consciousness, police use of force, and numerous policy issues, such as immigration law, health insurance, and federal spending. It was conducted on the Internet using the YouGov panel, an international market research firm that administers polls that collect information about politics, public affairs, products, brands, as well as other topics of general interest. The purpose of this study was to test questions for inclusion on the ANES 2016 Time Series, as well as other future ANES studies. Respondents were selected from the YouGov panel survey administered on the Internet. Response to these surveys are on a volunteer basis. The data are not weighted. This collection contains two weight variables, WEIGHT and WEIGHT_SPSS. The variable WEIGHT is the weight for analysis that is intended to generalize to the population. The variable WEIGHT_SPSS is the weight recommended to be used by SPSS users not using the Complex Samples procedures and will account for the smaller effective sample size. For more information on weights, please see the ANES 2016 Pilot Study Codebook and User Guide found within the zip package, as well as visit the ANES Data Center Web site. United States citizens age 18 or older. Smallest Geographic Unit: state The study was conducted on the Internet using the YouGov panel. The YouGov panel consists of a large and diverse set of over a million respondents who have volunteered to complete surveys online and who regularly receive invitations to do so. They receive points usually worth about 21 to 50 cents for each survey they complete. The points are redeemable for various gift cards, a YouGov t-shirt, or UNICEF a donation. A respondent has to complete about 40 surveys to be eligible for any reward. Respondents were selected from the YouGov panel by sample matching. Matching is intended to make the individuals who complete the survey represent the population on the variables used for matching. Respondents were matched to United States citizens in the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS) sample by gender, age, race, and education, and to the November 2010 Current Population Survey (CPS) for voter registration and turnout status, and to the 2007 Pew Religious Life Survey on interest in politics and party identification. 1,200 individuals from the YouGov panel were selected for the ANES Pilot Study to match the target population defined by the ACS, CPS, and Pew surveys. After data collection the sample was weighted by YouGov using propensity scores using a logistic regression with age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, region, and party identification included in the model. For more information on sampling, please see the ANES 2016 Pilot Study Codebook and User Guide found within the zip package, as well as visit the ANES Data Center Web site. web-based surveyThis collection has not been fully processed by ICPSR. All of the files are available in one zipped package. This collection will be fully curated at a later date. For more information on the ANES 2016 Pilot Study, please refer to the ANES Data Center Web site.

The 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study is a series of surveys of a representative sample of the American electorate recruited by telephone. Panelists began completing monthly surveys on the Internet in January 2008. The study is intended to support research on candidate choice and voter turnout in the 2008 presidential election. The chief purpose of the advance release is to make interim data available to the user community as quickly as possible after the presidential election. The advance release includes all survey responses to questions about the election that were asked in 2008, except for a small amount of data that has been redacted because its release could pose a risk to respondent privacy.

To minimize panel attrition and conditioning effects, only seven of the twenty-one monthly surveys are about politics. Other surveys are about a variety of non-political topics. The panelists answered political questions prepared by ANES in January, February, June, September, October and November 2008. With certainty, the panel will answer more political questions in May 2009. It is also possible that panelists will answer a limited number of political questions on other 2009 waves. The advance release includes data from the six ANES-created political surveys of 2008, as well as the recruitment and profile surveys. The full release will include data from all 21 waves. Note that the 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study is entirely separate from the 2008 ANES Time Series study, which was conducted using the traditional ANES method of face-to-face interviews before and after the 2008 election. Although there are a few questions common to both studies, the samples and methods are different.

For more information, see the "https://electionstudies.org/data-center/2008-2009-panel-study/" Target="_blank">User's Guide.

Replication Data for: Why Does the ANES Overestimate Voter Turnout?

This study is part of a time-series collection of national surveys fielded continuously since 1952, designed to present data on Americans' social backgrounds, enduring political predispositions, social and political values, perceptions and evaluations of groups and candidates, opinions on questions of public policy, and participation in political life. The 1996 National Election Study contains both pre- and post-election components. The Pre-Election Survey includes interviews in which approximately 77 percent of the cases are comprised of impanelled respondents first interviewed in either AMERICAN NATIONAL ELECTION STUDY, 1992: PRE- AND POST-ELECTION SURVEY ENHANCED WITH 1990 AND 1991 DATA or in AMERICAN NATIONAL ELECTION STUDY, 1994: POST-ELECTION SURVEY ENHANCED WITH 1992 AND 1993 DATA. The other 23 percent of the pre-election cases are a freshly drawn cross-section sample. Of the 1,714 citizens interviewed during the pre-election stage, 1,534 (89.5 percent) also participated in the Post-Election Survey (1,197 of these were panel cases and 337 were cross-section). The content of the 1996 Election Study reflects its dual function, both as the traditional presidential election year time-series data collectio n and as a panel study. Substantive themes presented in the 1996 questionnaires included interest in topics such as political campaigns, evaluations of the political parties, knowledge of and evaluation of presidential and House candidates, political participation (including turnout in the presidential primaries and in the November general election and other forms of electoral campaign activity), and vote choice for president, the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate, including second choice for president. Additional items focused on perceptions of personal and national economic well-being, positions on social welfare issues like the role of government in the provision of jobs and a good standard of living), positions on social issues (including abortion, women's roles, and prayer in the schools), racial and ethnic stereotypes, opinions on affirmative action, attitudes toward immigrants, opinions about the nation's most important problem, political predispositions, social altruism, social connectedness, feeling thermometers on a wide range of political figures and political groups, affinity with various social groups, and detailed demographic information and measures of religious affiliation and religiosity. Previous updates added a core battery of campaign-related items in the pre-election wave to better understand the dynamics of congressional campaigns, several questions related to issue importance and uncertainty both in relation to respondents and to candidates, an eight-minute module of questions developed by a consortium of electoral scholars from 52 polities to facilitate comparative analysis of political attitudes and voting behavior, and a measure of exposure to entertainment programs as an indirect measure of exposure to campaign advertisements. Additional items from previous updates concerned social issues, the environment, like air quality and the safety of drinking water, and the media. The fifth version of the data adds an auxiliary file consisting of merged data on group membership previously found in 1996 Pre-Post releases. In addition, the documentation for variable V961454, included in both the new Auxiliary file and in the 1996 Pre-Post file, was incorrect. The variable information has been corrected in the codebooks and variable labels for the Auxiliary File but not corrected in the 1996 Pre-Post codebook or variable labels.

The American National Election Studies (ANES) 2020 Social Media Study is a two-wave panel survey conducted on the Internet to provide data about voting and public opinion in the 2020 presidential election and to link these survey data with data downloaded from participants' Facebook accounts. The two-wave design mirrors the "https://electionstudies.org/" Target="_blank">ANES Time Series design, with pre-election and post-election questionnaires. This release contains only survey data and 'vote validation' data; data from the linked Facebook accounts will become available separately in the future.

Though the study features pre-election and post-election surveys, this study should not be confused with the ANES 2020 Time Series Study, which also includes pre- and post-election surveys on the Internet with a higher response rate, different and longer questionnaires, and a different and larger sample than this study.