With the primaries just about to explode all over the news, I thought this would be a good resource. Philip Lampi has spent almost fifty years putting together a set of records that have now become an online database: A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns 1787-1825 . This site, available at http://elections.lib.tufts.edu/aas_portal/index.xq , contains information on 15,000 elections. (Eventually information on 60,000 elections will be available.)

Unfortunately I was not able to access even one of the election results, as any attempt to actually load the site was met with lots and lots of waiting. Considering how huge and how unique this collection is, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Tufts.edu gets overwhelmed.

I’m going to keep trying to load it. You can try the link above to see if you have more luck than me, or you can get more background on the project here. I’m looking forward to seeing it….