2008 Precinct-Level Results Posted for 30 States

[DavidNYC]

As sort of a companion to Alcon's project, and a followup to the Swing State Project's own Presidential Results by CD project, I wanted to see which states make their precinct-level election data available at the state level. In other words, where can you get this data from the Secretary of State or state Board of Elections, and where do you have to go grubbing county-by-county?

I already knew, thanks to the Pres-by-CD project, that the latter category was frustratingly large. Fortunately, though, it turns out that 34 states (or dedicated folks) have posted 2008 election results by precinct. However, there's a wide variety of ways in which this data is offered. Some states make it easily available in a single spreadsheet for the whole state (eg, Wisconsin). Others force you to look at inconsistently formatted PDFs on a county-by-county basis (eg, Iowa). I therefore decided to download everything I could get my hands on, compile it as best I could, and upload the results. (Sorry, I haven't converted the PDFs into Excel files, but I have done a lot of compiling and organizing.)

Below are the 30 states which make some form of precinct file available. (The files for a 31st state, California, are too extensive to re-post.) The first link is to the compiled file(s) I've uploaded to a hosting service. In parens is the type of file (most of the ZIPs are collections of text files, except for IA, which is a very large PDF). The second link is to the source I used for the docs. In all cases, the files include at least the presidential numbers, though usually there is a lot more (such as governor, Senate, House, state lege, etc.) Without further ado:

AK (PDF) - Source
AZ (ZIP) - Source
AR (XLS) - Source
CA (DBF)
DE (TXT) - Source
GA (PDF) - Source
HI (XLS) - Source
ID (XLS) - Source
IA (ZIP) - Source
KS (XLS) - Source
LA (XLS) - Source
ME (XLS) - Source
MD (XLS) - Source
MI (ZIP) - Source
MN (ZIP) - Source
MS (PDF) - Source
MT (XLS) - Source
NH (XLS) - Source
NM (PDF) - Source
ND (XLS) - Source
OH (XLS) - Source
OK (XLS) - Source
PA (ZIP) - Source
RI (XLS) - Source
SD (XLS) - Source
TN (PDF) - Source
TX (CSV) - Source
VT (XLS) - Source
WA (ZIP) - Source
WI (XLS) - Source
WY (PDF) - Source

Three states make precinct-level results available through database-driven web interfaces, but I couldn't find a reasonable way to download the data. If you can figure out how to tap the following three states, please let me know.

North Carolina
South Carolina
Virginia

And finally, Alabama has claimed they will upload precinct results (and has in past years), but they have not yet done so for 2008 (or even 2006). If they ever do, I would expect the file(s) to appear on this page.

The remaining states (listed below) don't appear to offer precinct results at the state level anywhere that I've been able to find, though I've heard tell that Colorado offers something like this for somewhere in the vicinity of $300. Anyhow, if I'm wrong about any of these states, please post links to data sources:

Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Massachusetts
Missouri
Nebraska
Nevada
New Jersey
New York
Oregon
Utah
West Virginia

I hope this is helpful to someone out there!

UPDATE: Links to new sources for CA, OK & WA added.

[DavidNYC]

Wow, terrific, everyone - keep `em coming!

Verily, when you say "get a full list of the data in Trenton," do you mean from the NJ Division of Elections?

[DavidNYC]

Thanks for the update, Dave! Out of curiosity, how were you able to pull down the data from VA and SC? I couldn't see any way to get the data on those sites apart from laboriously going page by page. If you did that, my hat is off to you!

Also, it looks like folks have identified three more statewide data sources:

California
Oklahoma
Washington

[DavidNYC]

OH (XLS) - in process - filling in missing data, correcting errors

Two things I noticed in early versions of that Ohio file:

a) Butler County was missing US House data

b) Montgomery County was missing Obama data

I just checked it out again and it looks like that missing data is now included. So just a word of caution in case you have an old file.

[DavidNYC]

I'd be happy to give it a shot (though as you note, these files are largely not up to Atlas snuff). Some of the files are very large - esp. GA and WA. As long as you're okay with that, I'll give it a whirl.

[DavidNYC]

Actually, it looks like either you or Alcon needs to create an account for me at the wiki before I can do anything over there. Thanks.

[DavidNYC]

Thanks. Would there be any way to gain FTP access? That would be easier than trying to upload each file one at a time.

[DavidNYC]

At Dave's request, I have uploaded all of the precinct files to the Atlas Wiki. To save on everyone's bandwidth, I have ZIPped each file, so they are a lot smaller now. You can find them all here:

https://uselectionatlas.org/WIKI/index.php/2008_U.S._General_Election

One bit of good news: We now have a downloadable file for North Carolina. We still do not have files for the following states:

Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Massachusetts
Missouri
Nebraska
Nevada
New Jersey
New York (√)
Oregon
South Carolina (web only, √)
Utah
West Virginia
Virginia (web only, √)

√ = state which Dave has prepared himself

I also know that Alcon is working on a few files on this list. Hopefully he will upload them to the wiki when he is ready.