DOI: 10.57761/87vp-y078
title: L2 Voter and Demographic Dataset

description: If you have questions or concerns, please contact Ron Nakao at ronbo@stanford.edu.


description: The L2 Voter and Demographic Dataset includes demographic and voter history tables for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The dataset is built from publicly available government records about voter registration and election participation. These records indicate whether a person voted in an election or not, but they do not record whom that person voted for. Voter registration and election participation data are augmented by demographic information from outside data sources.

The L2 Voter and Demographic Dataset is current as of September 09 2024.
description: To create this file, L2 processes registered voter data on an ongoing basis for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with refreshes of the underlying state voter data typically at least every six months and refreshes of telephone numbers and National Change of Address processing approximately every 30 to 60 days. These data are standardized and enhanced with propriety commercial data and modeling codes and consist of approximately 185,000,000 records nationwide.


description: For each state, there are two available tables: demographic and voter history. The demographic and voter tables can be joined on the `LALVOTERID `variable. One can also use the `LALVOTERID `variable to link the L2 Voter and Demographic Dataset with the L2 Consumer Dataset.



In addition, the `LALVOTERID `variable can be used to validate the state. For example, let's look at the `LALVOTERID = LALCA3169443`. The characters in the fourth and fifth positions of this identifier are 'CA' (California). The second way to validate the state is by using the `RESIDENCE_ADDRESSES_STATE `variable, which should have a value of 'CA' (California).



The date appended to each table name represents when the data was last updated. These dates will differ state by state because states update their voter files at different cadences.



The demographic files use 698 consistent variables. For more information about these variables, see ***2024-07-05-L2-Voter-Demographic-File-Layout.xlsx***.



The voter history files have different variables depending on the state. The ***2024-09-09-L2-Voter-Dictionaries.tar.gz ***file contains .csv data dictionaries for each state's demographic and voter files. While the demographic file data dictionaries should mirror the*** 2024-07-05-L2-Voter-Demographic-File-Layout.xls***x file, the voter file data dictionaries will be unique to each state.



***Experian\_Mosaic\_Guide.pdf *** is a codebook for two variables which appear in the demographic tables: 'CommercialData\_MosaicZ4' and 'CommercialData\_MosaicZ4Global.'



***L2\_Data\_Dictionary.pdf ***has information about where variables were sourced from.



***2024-07-10-National-File-Notes.pdf ***contains L2 Voter and Demographic Dataset ("National File") release notes from 2018 to 2024.

As of July 2024, all files were updated to a new file layout. For a summary of the layout changes, see ***2024-08-14-L2-Voter-Demographic-File-Layout-Updates.xlsx***.

For information about how consumer information has been incorporated into the new file layout, see ***2024-07-31-L2-Voter-Demographic-Added-Consumer-Information.xlsx***.