The Gubernatorial Campaign Finance Database

Campaign Finance Law Data

Welcome to the web page for the Gubernatorial Campaign Finance Law Database, compiled by Jennifer M. Jensen of the University at Albany. This is part of a larger data project sponsored by Professor Thad Beyle of the University of North Carolina and Professor Jensen. Frank Vander Valk, a doctoral student at the University at Albany, provided extensive research assistance.

We ask that you include a citation in all papers that use these data. Please refer to the database as the Gubernatorial Campaign Finance Database, compiled by Thad Beyle and Jennifer Jensen. For further information, see the following:

Jensen, Jennifer M. and Thad Beyle. 2003. "Of Footnotes, Missing Data, and Lessons for 50-State Data Collection: The Gubernatorial Campaign Finance Project, 1977-2001." State Politics and Policy Quarterly 3 (Summer): 203-214.

These data are presented in a series of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. There are five sets of spreadsheets; each set has individual spreadsheets detailing the laws in different years. The data were collected from the U.S. Federal Election Commission's Campaign Finance Law series. The FEC published this document triennially starting in 1977; since 1984 it has been published biennially. Details regarding the database are found in our SPPQ article.

The data presented here are quite straightforward. As a result, we do not have a formal codebook, but we do provide some information about coding. We encourage you to review this information if you plan to use these data.

** We do not have data for 1981 or 1984; it was not collected in the FEC documents we used for these data.