Data & Sources
Where our numbers come from, and how to cite them.
PolitiFinder compiles U.S. election results into one consistent record. We lead with the popular vote because it’s the most comparable figure across eras and offices, and we link a person’s whole career together across the offices they ran for.
Download: U.S. Election Records
The most striking records in U.S. election history — biggest landslides, closest races, most votes, the presidents who won while losing the popular vote, the youngest and oldest senators, and more — across President, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and Governor. One row per record, names and public links only.
- Format
- CSV & JSON
- Records
- 115
- Version
- 1.0.2
- Data current as of
- July 20, 2026
- License
- CC BY 4.0
Also on GitHub, Kaggle, and archived with a citable DOI on Zenodo (10.5281/zenodo.20768539).
Every record reconciles to its live records & rankings page. This file holds names and public links only, not the underlying race-by-race data. Career totals count a person only as the named candidate; running-mate (vice-presidential) ticket votes are excluded.
Preview
| record | subject | detail | value | unit | year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biggest presidential landslides | Warren G. Harding | def. James M. Cox | 26.2 | points | 1920 |
| Closest presidential elections | James A. Garfield | def. Winfield Scott Hancock | 0.1 | points | 1880 |
| Won while losing the popular vote | Donald Trump | lost popular vote to Hillary Clinton | 2,868,686 | votes | 2016 |
| Most popular votes, single election | Joe Biden | Won | 81,283,501 | votes | 2020 |
| Closest U.S. Senate elections | Louis C. Wyman | New Hampshire · def. John A. Durkin | 0.0 | points | 1974 |
| Strongest third-party / independent | Ross Perot | Independent | 19,743,821 | votes | 1992 |
| Youngest U.S. senators | Rush D. Holt | West Virginia | 29 | years | 1934 |
| Most career popular votes (named) | Donald Trump | 2016–2024, 3 elections | 214,511,383 | votes | — |
Columns
| field | type | description |
|---|---|---|
record | string | The record category, e.g. "Biggest presidential landslides". |
rank | integer | 1..N within that record. |
subject | string | Candidate name or election (display text). |
detail | string | Short context, e.g. "def. James M. Cox". |
metric | string | What is measured, e.g. "popular-vote margin (pts)". |
value | number | The figure. |
unit | string | points / votes / % / electoral votes / years. |
year | year | Election year (blank for career records). |
office | enum | President / U.S. Senate / U.S. House / Governor. |
url | uri | The public PolitiFinder page for that record or candidate. |
Cite & attribution
PolitiFinder. (2026). U.S. Election Records (Version 1.0.2) [Data set]. 137 Finder LLC. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20768539
Reusing the data? Attribution is required under CC BY 4.0, and we’d be grateful for a link back. Paste this and you’re done:
Data source: <a href="https://politifinder.com/data">U.S. Election Records</a> by <a href="https://politifinder.com">PolitiFinder</a>, licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a>.
What we cover
Every candidate on the ballot, winners and challengers alike, linked into one career record per person, across four offices and all 50 states:
| Office | Years | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| President | 1789–2024 | Popular vote from 1824; electoral vote from 1789 |
| U.S. Senate | 1914–2024 | All 50 states (the popular-vote era, since the 17th Amendment) |
| Governor | 1789–2025 | All 50 states |
| U.S. House | 1788–2024 | All 50 states, by district |
Sources
Presidential popular votes come from official certified results — the U.S. Federal Election Commission and the Clerk of the U.S. House (1976–2024) — with earlier figures from official returns archived by ICPSR and, for the founding era, the American Antiquarian Society and Tufts University’s A New Nation Votes; electoral votes are from the U.S. National Archives. Senate and House totals from 1976 on come from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab; the historical Senate (1914–1975) and House come from the Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA). Governor totals are compiled from official state canvasses published by state Secretaries of State and boards of elections. Biographies and portraits come from Wikidata and the Congressional Bioguide. Figures are reconciled across sources; always verify against the primary source before citing in formal work.
How current it is
Coverage runs through the 2024 federal elections and the 2025 governor races. The data is static between updates: figures change only when we reload a dataset and redeploy, so every cited number is stable and reproducible. This data was last verified July 28, 2026. For the full sourcing standard, the entity-resolution method behind our career and family vote totals, and an honest list of limitations, see our methodology & how-to-cite page.
Corrections & updates
The data is continuously spot-checked, and every correction ships as a dated, reviewable change. Recent fix batches:
- July 18, 2026: 301-redirected two merged-duplicate profile slugs flagged by Search Console to their canonical profiles, and merged the Frank Murkowski name-variant fragment into one six-race career.
- July 8, 2026: merged 6 sitting U.S. House members’ name-spelling-change fragments into one profile each, with authoritative Bioguide IDs backfilled.
- July 2, 2026: merged 15 fragmented career records, including an Ohio 3rd-district cluster, 2018 Pennsylvania fragments, and Mike DeWine’s House, Senate, and Governor career into one; merged the fragmented Jack Reed Senate records; backfilled FEC-official third-party presidential vote totals for 2004–2024; and corrected Gary Johnson’s home state.
- June 28, 2026: merged the two Ben Nelson records (governor and Senate) into one career; added verified Bioguide IDs to 8 senator profiles.
- June 22, 2026: corrected Joseph F. Malloney’s birth date (1865 to 1835) and restored Thomas H. Morrow’s full name.
- June 21, 2026: merged 12 duplicate president records whose careers had been split between a presidential and a congressional entry (Lincoln, Madison, Polk, and others); split a three-way “Robert Carr” conflation; backfilled party labels for 100 modern candidates; corrected the 2022 Alaska Senate result ordering.
- June 20, 2026: split roughly a dozen cross-office name conflations found by our ongoing validator and fixed two vote-percentage errors.
- June 19, 2026: reconciled every U.S. House race to the canonical MIT Election Lab file, correcting California 2018 (uniformly doubled totals), Maryland 2018, and Texas 2006.
Corrections follow the guarded method described on the methodology page: records are researched against primary sources and reassigned, never bulk-merged on a name match.
How to cite
Please credit PolitiFinder and link back. The full suggested citation:
PolitiFinder (137 Finder LLC). U.S. Election Records. politifinder.com, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20768539. Accessed [date].
Every profile and election has a clean, permanent URL you can cite or link directly. For the full methodology and coverage notes, see our methodology page; for corrections and editorial standards, see About PolitiFinder.