1968 U.S. presidential election data

County-level dataset containing election results and demographics from the 1968 U.S. presidential election in the states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas.

Usage

elec_1968

Format

A data frame with 1,143 rows and 41 variables:

fips: County FIPS code
state: State name
abbr: State abbreviation
region: Census region
division: Census division
county: County name
pop: Total population at the 1970 census
pop_city, pop_urban, pop_rural: Proportion of the population in city, urban and rural areas
pop_white, pop_black, pop_aian, pop_asian, pop_hisp: Proportion of the population in each racial group. The first four columns sum to 1, but pop_hisp should be considered separately.
vap: Voting-age population at the 1970 census
vap_white, vap_black, vap_other: Proportion of the voting-age population in each racial group
farm, nonfarm: Proportion of the population in farm and non-farm households
educ_elem, educ_hsch, educ_coll: Proportion of the population with elementary, high school, and college education
cvap: Citizen voting-age population at the 1970 census
cvap_white, cvap_black, cvap_other: Proportion of the citizen voting-age population in each racial group
inc_00_03k, inc_03_08k, inc_08_25k, inc_25_99k: Proportion of the population in households with income in each bracket. Median household income in 1970 was $9,870
pres_dem_hum, pres_rep_nix, pres_ind_wal, pres_abs, pres_oth: Proportion of votes for Humphrey, Nixon, and Wallace, and other candidates. pres_abs is calculated as one minus the Humphrey, Nixon, and Wallace vote shares.
pres_total: Total number of votes cast for president.
pres_turn: Proportion of the voting-age population that turned out to vote.
pres_turn_icpsr: Proportion of the voting-age population that turned out to vote using ICPSR data in the denominator.
adj: A FIPS-indexed adjacency list capturing the geographic (rook) adjacency between counties. To convert to a 1-indexed adjacency list, run lapply(elec_1968$adj, function(x) match(x, elec_1968$fips)).

Source

Census data: Steven Manson, Jonathan Schroeder, David Van Riper, Katherine Knowles, Tracy Kugler, Finn Roberts, and Steven Ruggles. IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 19.0. 1970 Decennial Census. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS. 2024. doi:10.18128/D050.V19.0

Presidential election data: Clubb, Jerome M., Flanigan, William H., and Zingale, Nancy H. Electoral Data for Counties in the United States: Presidential and Congressional Races, 1840-1972. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (distributor), 2006-11-13. doi:10.3886/ICPSR08611.v1