The American National Election Studies (ANES) are academically-run national surveys of voters in the United States, conducted before and after every presidential election. Although it was formally established by a

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

grant in 1977, the data are a continuation of studies going back to 1948. The study has been based at the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

since its origin and, since 2005, has been run in partnership with

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. Its principal investigators for the first four years of the partnership were Arthur Lupia and Jon Krosnick. As of 2025, the principal investigators are Nicholas Valentino of the University of Michigan and

Shanto Iyengar Shanto Iyengar is an American political scientist and professor of political science at Stanford University. He is also the Harry & Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford, the director of Stanford's Political Communication Lab, a ...

of Stanford University. With more than 9,800 citations in published work, data spanning over 75 years, and more than 70 datasets, the American National Election Studies has acted as a cornerstone for public opinion research for the past 75 years, asking a representative sample of the American population survey questions before and after presidential elections. The ANES asks participants a wide scope of questions, ranging from the party identification of the respondent’s mother to their opinion on gay people in the military. Due to the ANES’ impressive research methods, it is commonly referred to as “the gold standard” of political science survey data. The studies ask the same questions repeatedly over time and are frequently cited in works of

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

. Early ANES data was the basis for '' The American Voter'' (1960). It is now used by scholars, students and journalists. It has allowed the detection of partisan bias in survey responses, showing that respondents' political affiliations contribute to their responses, extending even to questions with objective, known answers, such as whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. In 2006, ANES opened the ANES Online Commons to allow interested scholars and survey professionals to propose questions for future surveys. In 2022, ANES received a $14 million grant to study the 2024 United States elections. University of Michigan professor Nicholas Valentino,

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

's D. Sunshine Hillygus, and the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 2 ...

' Daron Shaw will be principal investigators. On the American National Election Studies website, the data the study has collected over the past 75 years can be accessed and downloaded under the “Data Center” tab. This tab houses many datasets, including those for each year studied and a time series dataset that holds data from 1958 on. These datasets can be downloaded in many formats, including as a CSV file, which can be used when coding in R. The ANES also utilizes a question search tool to assist in research, which allows researchers to filter every ANES variable given a keyword to find the preferred variable.

References

External links

* {{U.S. Elections by State Psephology Elections in the United States