About PolitiFinder
A career vote record for American politics.
PolitiFinder is a searchable database of U.S. elections. Look up any president, senator, or governor and you’ll see every election they ran in, who they beat or lost to, and their career total popular votes — the headline number that ties a whole career together. Open any race to compare the popular vote against the electoral college.
The idea comes straight from sports reference sites: the founder built Sherdog’s original “FightFinder,” where you click any fighter and trace their entire record opponent by opponent. PolitiFinder does the same for politicians — every contest, every opponent, every vote.
What we cover
- President — every election, popular votes (1824–2024) and electoral votes (1789–2024).
- U.S. Senate — all 50 states, 1914–2024 (the popular-vote era).
- Governor — all 50 states, 1900–2024.
- U.S. House — all 50 states, 1976–2024, by district.
A career follows the person across offices, so someone who served in more than one role (a governor who became president, a representative who became a senator) shows a single combined vote total.
Where the numbers come from
We lead with the popular vote because it’s the most comparable figure across eras and offices. Presidential popular votes follow Dave Leip’s Atlas (pre-1976) and official certified totals (1976–2024). Senate and House totals come from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab. Governor totals are compiled from official state canvasses (via Wikipedia). Figures are reconciled across sources, but PolitiFinder is a Beta — please verify against the primary source before citing in formal work.
For teachers, journalists & researchers
PolitiFinder is built to be quoted. A few ways to use it:
- Download the data. The full President / Senate / Governor table is a free CSV on the data page — open it in Excel, Sheets, R, or Python.
- Link to a person or a race. Every profile and election has a clean, permanent URL you can cite or hand to students.
- Start from the records & rankings. Biggest landslides, closest races, career popular-vote leaders, and the presidents who won while losing the popular vote — each links back to the underlying contests.
- Cite us. Suggested form: “PolitiFinder (137 Finder LLC), politifinder.com, accessed [date].”
Nonpartisan by design
PolitiFinder reports results, not opinions. There are no endorsements, no commentary, and no party framing — just the record of who ran and how the vote came in.
Contact
Corrections, data questions, and press inquiries: support@politifinder.com. Spotted a number that looks off? Tell us — accuracy is the whole point.