The 2020 U.S. General Election official county-level results are now publicly available all in one place, in a variety of formats.
The collection includes official election results for each of the 50 states, the five major territories, and the District of Columbia. It includes all federal contests, most statewide contents, and most state legislative contests, with results reported at the county level. Where jurisdictions provide breakdowns by voting method, those breakdowns are also included.
This publication is important because in the United States there is no official source for consolidated nationwide election results. Elections are controlled by the individual states, districts, and territories. In most of these jurisdictions, elections are implemented at the county level. This local control includes choices about when and how to publish election results. This means that in the United States, consolidated election results are only available when a company or non-governmental agency chooses to make them available. It takes a large amount of work to consolidate data from across the country.
That’s why it’s very exciting that this newly published dataset is available to the public. Political organizers, political scientists, and election enthusiasts can now easily analyze the 2020 General election nationwide. The data also allows comparisons of results in a large variety of different contests and by voting method.
In addition to tabular, xml and json formats consistent across the entire United States, the original raw files from the Boards of Election are available for download. The authors believe they are the first to publish such a dataset for the 2020 elections.
The published data is the product of software and data collection done at Portland State University, jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and Verified Voting. The authors are Stephanie Singer, Janaki Srungavarapu, and Todd Graham.