What you can do with your NationBuilder Voter File

What's in the NationBuilder voter file?

In short? It's everything you need to run for office, make scientific predictions about who will elect the next president, and research voting histories as well as demographics to understand trends amongst the electorate.

The Problem: Not all files are created equally

The 2002 Help America Vote Act required states to centrally administer voting records (before that, local officials could maintain their own official lists) to receive federal elections funds – but each state interprets the law in its own way, so there are inconsistent file formats and update schedules for voter files. Some states have even found more than 20 different ways to misspell the same major city!

The Solution: Consistency

At NationBuilder, we've created a standardized national voter file and make it available to any legally authorized users. It's a complete and regularly updated file for each of the United States' more than 190 million registered voters. We acquire data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia (and from many counties that update records faster or in more detail than state authorities), by file transfer, fax and mail requests, hand pickup or whatever it takes – saving candidates and researchers acquisition expense and data development resources.

Why?:

Accurate and openly available list of eligible voters and their vote history, complete with actionable contact information, is crucial to free and open elections. And the fun part is what eligible voter file users can do with that file.

A comprehensive voter file informs you of who is engaged or not engaged in the political process and to what degree. Smart candidates have told us they personally filter and comb through the data to better understand their electorate. The file includes information like, how long a voter has been registered, how frequently they vote, which party primaries they are most interested in, and how to reach them in the best way, either by mail, phone or even email.

Advantages of the NationBuilder voter file:

1. Regularly updated using the most reliable authorities. In the pursuit of accuracy, we go to straight to the source. Some Secretary of State offices maintain incomplete data or are slow to update files, so we often spend time with local counties to collect the most accurate and up-to-date information available.
2. Uses a globally unique identifier. Our GUID for every person in the U.S. matches data about voters across accounts, products, campaigns, and research projects.
3. Standardized formatting. Because it’s a uniform file format across all 50 states and the District of Columbia,data is clean and easy to use for research, outreach, and action.
4. You'll own your own data. Everything you learn will be yours to keep so you can grow and develop according to your own values as long as it's legal. 

What you can do:

While there are some restrictions, you can do a lot with a file of 190 million Americans. Here are just a few things we've seen folks do with the file:

1. Run for office!
2. Build turnout and candidate preference models and predictions based on age, gender, contact types, names, voting behavior, political affiliation
3. Engineer new civic applications that improve the democratic process
4. Conduct polls
5. Target and focus outreach and survey efforts for 501c3 or 501c4 organizations

What’s more exciting is all of the use cases we haven’t thought of yet, so get creative! If you’re interested in learning more we’d love to talk.

Feel free to email us or give us a call at 213.394.4623