Record of American Democracy, 1984-1990

The Record of American Democracy (ROAD) data provide election returns, socioeconomic summaries, and demographic details about the American public at unusually low levels of geographic aggregation. The NSF-supported ROAD project spans every state in the country from 1984 through 1990 (including some off-year elections). These data enable research on topics such as electoral behavior, the political characteristics of local community context, electoral geography, the role of minority groups in elections and legislative redistricting, split ticket voting and divided government, and elections under federalism. One set of files (Part 3, PRECINCT directory, consisting of 205 SPSS portable files) includes every election at and above state House, along with party registration and other variables, in each state for the roughly 170,000 precincts nationwide (about 60 times the number of counties). Another set of files (Part 4, MCDGRP directory, 52 SPSS portable files) has added to these roughly 30-40 political variables an additional 3,725 variables merged from the 1990 United States Census for 47,327 aggregate units called MCD groups. The MCD group is a construct for purposes of this data collection. It is based on a merging of the electoral precincts and Census Minor Civil Divisions (MCDs). A MCD is about the size of a city or town. A MCD group is smaller than or equal to a county and (except in California) is greater than or equal to the size of a MCD. The MCD group units completely tile the United States landmass. The program used to create the MCD group level is also included as part of this collection, as well as the input and output files. This collection also includes geographic boundary files (found in the BOUNDS directory, Part 2) so users can easily draw maps with these data. Complete documentation of this study can be found in HTML format in the DOCS directory (Part 1). Also, the provided "User Guide" has an abbreviated version of the codebook (one not including basic voting variable statistics) for reference.

《美国民主纪事》（ROAD）数据集提供了选举结果、社会经济概要和关于美国公众的详细人口统计信息，其地理聚集程度之低实属罕见。由美国国家科学基金会资助的ROAD项目覆盖了该国自1984年至1990年期间的所有州（包括某些非年度选举）。这些数据为研究选举行为、地方社区背景的政治特征、选举地理、少数群体在选举和立法区划中的作用、分裂选票投票和分权政府，以及联邦制下的选举等课题提供了可能。一组文件（第3部分，选区目录，包含205个SPSS便携式文件）包括了全国约17万个选区（约是县数量的60倍）在每个州内及以上的所有选举，以及党派注册和其他变量。另一组文件（第4部分，MCDGRP目录，52个SPSS便携式文件）在原先大约30-40个政治变量基础上，增加了来自1990年美国人口普查的3,725个变量，这些变量被合并到了47,327个被称为MCD群体的汇总单位中。MCD群体是本数据收集的构建单元。它基于选举选区和人口普查次级民事单位（MCDs）的合并。MCD的大小与一个城市或城镇相当。MCD群体小于或等于县的大小，但在加利福尼亚州以外，其大小大于或等于MCD。MCD群体单元完全覆盖了美国陆地。创建MCD群体级别的程序及其输入输出文件也作为本收集的一部分。此外，该收集还包括地理边界文件（位于第2部分的BOUNDS目录中），以便用户能够轻松地使用这些数据绘制地图。本研究的完整文档以HTML格式存储在DOCS目录（第1部分）中。同时，提供的“用户指南”包含了代码簿的简略版（不包括基本投票变量统计），供用户参考。