Data
As part of my dissertation at the University of Oklahoma, I collected and coded the bylaws that govern each state Democratic and Republican party’s state central committee. The version of this dataset currently available below, contains party rules that were in place in the lead up to the 2018 midterm elections. In this current iteration, you will find rules pertaining to gender and age representation in each state central committee, whether each party has a policy of maintaining neutrality during contested primary elections, and the membership status of co-partisan elected officials. My purpose for constructing this dataset was to examine the role of state political parties in congressional primary elections, but I hope this data will be of interest to others. As a result, one of my longterm goals is to maintain and expand this dataset across future election cycles with the hope of maintaining a historical record of the leadership and bylaws of state political parties.
Please Cite:
Geras, Matthew J. [date retrieved] State Political Party Bylaws Dataset. Retrieved from www.matthewgeras.com/data/
If you have questions, comments, or potential corrections, please contact me at mgera2@uis.edu
Research Using this Data
Geras, Matthew J. 2023. “Do Party Rules Matter?: An Examination of State Party Bylaws and Congressional Nominations.” American Politics Research 51(4): 525-542.
Geras, Matthew J. 2021. “Women Running the Party and Women Running for Congress: An Examination of State Party Diversity and Candidate Emergence in the 2018 Midterm Elections.” Party Politics 27 (5): 942-952.