The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
Americans did not directly vote for senators for the first 125 years of the Federal Government. The Constitution, as it was adopted in 1788, stated that senators would be elected by state legislatures. The first proposal to amend the Constitution to elect senators by popular vote was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1826, but the idea did not gain considerable support until the late 19th century when several problems related to Senate elections had become evident.
The 19th Amendment guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation. Beginning in the mid-19th century, woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered radical change.
The Guide provides immediate access to tables and graphs that display the ebb and flow of public opinion, electoral behavior, and choice in American politics over time. It serves as a resource for political observers, policy makers, and journalists, teachers, students, and social scientists. It currently contains data from 1948 through 2012.
A collaborative effort from the University of California at Santa Barbara, these archives contain 104,106 documents related to the study of the Presidency. Includes voter turnout, financing elections, election documents, speeches, briefings, statements, and much more.
Database of and index to 5000+ full text, audio and video versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two.
Winners share the limelight with the defeated in this exhibit of U.S. presidential campaign memorabilia drawn primarily from the holdings of the Duke University Special Collections Library.
Since 1920, the Clerk of the House has collected and published the official vote counts for federal elections from the official sources among the various states and territories.
The Living Room Candidate contains more than 300 commercials, from every presidential election since 1952, when Madison Avenue advertising executive Rosser Reeves convinced Dwight Eisenhower that short ads played during such popular TV programs as I Love Lucy would reach more voters than any other form of advertising. This innovation had a permanent effect on the way presidential campaigns are run.
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research.
Public Agenda is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that helps diverse leaders and citizens navigate divisive, complex issues and work together to find solutions.
This resource guide compiles a list of online and print resources that contain U.S. election statistics for both federal and state elections. All of the print publications listed in this guide can be consulted on-site at the Library of Congress.
The United States Elections Web Archive includes campaign sites archived weekly during the election seasons since 2000, documenting sites associated with presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial elections. The collection includes official campaign sites from general elections, special elections, and off-year elections. The sites archived in this collection typically include social media channels as well, in order to provide a fuller representation of how candidates presented themselves via the Internet to the electorate.
Voting America examines long-term patterns in presidential election politics in the United States from the 1840s to today as well as some patterns in recent congressional election politics. (Earlier congressional elections will be added in the future). The project offers a wide spectrum of animated and interactive visualizations of how Americans voted in elections over the past 168 years. You can also find expert analysis and commentary videos that discuss some of the most interesting and significant trends in American political history.
In 1865, 1868, and 1870, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution guaranteed black citizens important freedoms—outlawing slavery, granting universal citizenship and due process, and extended voting rights to all
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