L2 Voter Data supports research into voter behavior and demographics, by providing detailed demographic profiles, historical voting records, party affiliation data, and geospatial analysis tools. L2 Voter Data is a regularly updated database of all registered voters in the US, and contains voting records going back, in some cases, to 2001.
Access to L2 Voter Data Raw Files is mediated by Data Services and is only available to WashU researchers. Graduate and undergraduate researchers must have a faculty advisor or sponsor.
Voter files are publicly available government records of adults registered to vote in the United States who cast ballots in past elections. However, the term “voter file” typically describes any database of eligible voters used by a campaign or political organization. At a minimum, a voter file includes the voter's name, contact information, demographic information, and political affiliation.
L2 data collects publicly available voter files from each state and gathers them into a standardized format. They collect data from minor and major elections, parties, districts, credit bureaus, telecom companies, and government sources. Its voter files include nearly 95 million cell phones nationwide. Their visualization tools provide additional geographic, electoral, and demographic data.
No. Voter file data indicates who voted in a given election and by what method (absentee, in-person, etc.) but not how they voted.
L2 Data provides hundreds of voter variables for study. To see a list of all possible variables in the dataset, see the L2 Voter Data Dictionary. For the full data dictionary, see the Source Format Layout file in the WashU Research Data Repository.
States vary widely in how the information contained in voter lists may be used and it will be your responsibility to comply with these regulations. We recommend consulting the National Conference of State Legislatures state-by-state summary below.