Research: Political Science: Data and Statistics

Data Collections and Datasets

ICPSR Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research This link opens in a new window
ICPSR is the world's largest archive of social science data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
Roper Center Public Opinion Archives This link opens in a new window
A public opinion archive that preserves data from polls conducted by leading survey organizations. Most of the data are from the US but 50+ nations are represented. SEARCH ROPER iPOLL
Policy Map This link opens in a new window
Mapping and visualization tool. US demographic, economic and social data by city, state, zip code, county or census tract. Derived from both public and proprietary sources.

Free Dataset Collections

International Dataset Collections

China Data Online This link opens in a new window Subscription to China Statistical Databases through China Data Center which provides comprehensive updated information on China’s economic development at national, provincial, city, county, and industrial levels, including: Monthly Statistics, National Statistics, Provincial Statistics, City Statistics, County Statistics, Industrial Statistics and Statistical Yearbooks. BU’s subscription is limited to 14 China Statistical Databases.

Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Data CSES is a collaborative program of research among election study teams from around the world. Data includes Election Studies, Voter turnout and Vote Choice Data Overviews.
Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives Research data and metadata, including sociological surveys, election studies, longitudinal studies, opinion polls, and census data

Direction of Trade Statistics This link opens in a new window Time series data from 1980-present detailing the value of merchandise exports and imports between each country and all its trading partners. Includes total bilateral and multilateral exports and imports aggregated at national or regional group levels. The database contains over 100,000 time series covering more than 180 countries and areas.
Economist Intelligence Unit: Country Reports This link opens in a new window Each country page in the EIU database provides forecast updates and featured analysis on economic and political events as well as content pertaining to market opportunities, government regulations and the financial services sector.
International Debt Statistics (IDS). This link opens in a new window Formerly known as Global Development Finance online. Focuses on financial flows, trends in external debt, and other major financial indicators for developing and advanced economies. Data is from Quarterly External Debt Statistics and Quarterly Public Sector Debt databases.
International Financial Statistics This link opens in a new window International Financial Statistics (IFS) from the International Monetary Fund includes data on exchange rates, international interest rates, prices, production, and international transactions (including balance of payments), as well as individual country government, finance, and national account data for individual countries.

IPUMS survey data Census and survey data from around the world.

OECD iLibrary This link opens in a new window OECD iLibrary is the online library of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) featuring books, papers and statistics and is the gateway to OECD’s analysis and data. It replaced SourceOECD in July 2010. OECD iLibrary also contains content published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), the OECD Development Centre, PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), and the International Transport Forum (ITF).

UNdata: Search Datasets UN "datamarts" contain over 60 million data points and cover agriculture, crime, communication, development assistance, education, energy, environment, finance, gender, health, labour market, manufacturing, national accounts, population and migration, science and technology, tourism, transport and trade.
UN National Statistical Offices Directory of National Statistical Office websites as compiled by the United Nations Statistics Division.
UK Data Archive The UK's largest digital collection of social sciences and population research data
World Bank Data Catalog World Bank's development data includes data from the World Bank's microdata, finances and energy data platforms, as well as datasets from their open data catalog.
World Bank Open Data

World Development Indicators (WDI) This link opens in a new window World Development Indicators (WDI) contains statistics from over 200 countries including social, economic and financial indicators.

World Resources Institute. Open Data Portal. Data on environment and human development: Cities, Climate, Energy, Food, Forests, the Ocean and Water.
Columbia Climate School (Columbia University). Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) CIESIN data includes: Agriculture, Biodiversity & Ecosystems, Climate Change, Environmental Assessment & Modeling, Environmental Health, Environmental Treaties, Land Use/Land Cover Change, Natural Hazards and Vulnerability, Population, Poverty Remote Sensing for Human Dimensions Research.

U.S. Government Dataset Collections

Data.gov Data.gov aims to improve public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Federal Government. The site has grown from 47 datasets at launch to over 180,000.
StatsAmerica Portal to US government data; a service of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.
Explore Census Data Access data about the nation's people and economy including demographic data and the Economic Census.
Census Bureau: Data Access data through products and tools including data visualizations, mobile apps, interactive web apps and other software.
Current Population Survey data - U.S. Census Current Population Survey, sponsored jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics is the primary source of labor force statistics for the population of the U.S.
Census - County and City Data Provides access to the 1944 through 2000 County and City Data Books. Also provides the opportunity to create custom printouts and/or customized data subsets (subsets only available for 1988-2000).
American Community Survey Ongoing survey by the U.S. Census Bureau that regularly gathers information previously contained only in the long form of the decennial census, such as ancestry, educational attainment, income, language proficiency, migration, disability, employment, and housing characteristics.
HUD User Data Sets HUD USER provides interested researchers with access to the original data sets generated by PD&R-sponsored data collection efforts, including the American Housing Survey, HUD median family income limits, as well as microdata from research initiatives on topics such as housing discrimination, the HUD-insured multifamily housing stock, and the public housing population.
Bureau of Labor Statistics BLS is the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics.
Bureau of Economic Analysis BEA is a U.S. government agency that provides official macroeconomic and industry statistics including the gross domestic product of the U.S.
Bureau of Justice Statistics/Data BJS stores the full data sets, surveys, and codebooks for most of their data collections at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) as soon as the data have been finalized. These raw or ‘micro’ data are what analysts use to generate the summary data tables found within BJS reports, statistical tables, and data tools. The archived data allow researchers to conduct secondary analysis of BJS data.
FBI's Crime Data Explorer The FBI collects crime data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.
Department of the Treasury - Data and Charts Center Interest rates, public debt, auction info, and more.
National Center for Education Statistics NCES collects, analyzes and makes available data related to education in the U.S. and other nations.
National Center for Health Statistics (CDC) Provides US public health statistics including diseases, pregnancies, births, aging, and mortality.
CDC Wonder (Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research) CDC Wonder is a system for disseminating Public Health data and information.
HealthData.gov Site dedicated to making high value health data more accessible to entrepreneurs, researchers, and policy makers in the hopes of better health outcomes for all.
EPA Environmental Dataset Gateway EPA's official open data catalog - air quality, water quality, climate, environmental justice etc
U.S. Energy Information Administration. Open Data.
Petroleum, Natural Gas, Electricity, Natural Gas, Renewable & Alternative Fuels, Nuclear & Uranium, and Data summaries