An Historical Dataset of the Constitutional Referendum

This dataset provides a nearly comprehensive record of all national-level constitutional referenda between 1789 and 2016.

Pursuing the most comprehensive coverage possible, the data are sourced from a number of existing datasets and other works. As far as we can tell, one of the best extant sources of data on referenda is a collection created by the Centre for Research on Direct Democracy (http://c2d.ch). 258 observations from their database make up something the cornerstone of this dataset. The structure of the dataset also follows the pattern that they established. A second major source is the series of national election data handbooks created by Dieter Nohlen and his co-authors. The Nohlen handbooks contribute an additional 204 observations. For an additional 69 referenda, we collected data directly from national electoral agencies. Finally, we include data collected by Mads Qvortrup (38 observations) and Beat Müller (75 observations). In all, the dataset includes 644 referenda spanning the years 1797 to 2016.