Election 2008 Resources

These are from Loreana O'English's article from College and Research Libraries: News. 69(1) 2008.

Background and General Election Information
Campaigns and Elections
Trade magazine offers articles, profiles, and news about the profession.

Campaign Legal Center
Nonprofit, nonpartisan center follows and initiates legal actions on issues such as campaign finances, election laws, and political ethics.

Federal Election Commission
Information about legal and regulatory rules relating to federal campaign finance issues.

University of Michigan Document Center: Election 2008
Information on presidential, congressional, and state candidates as well as background information.

U.S. Census Bureau: Voting and Registrations
Provides voting and registration statistics from population surveys conducted by the Census Bureau.

U.S. Census Bureau: Voting and Regulation
Provides voting and registration statistics from population surveys, along with population estimates, historical time-series date, and research reports.

Vote 411
Sponsored by the League of Women Voters Education Fund and provides information on state level absentee voting, election dates, voting registration, voting machines, eligibility requirements and more.

Political News
Campaign U.
Sponsored by Chronicle of Higher Education and offers articles on issues affecting students, colleges and university, and higher education policy.

CQPolitcs
Sponsored by Congressional Quarterly that offers a political toolkit, political news, and blogs.

Indecision2008
Sponsored by Comedy Central provides video clips, interviews, political blogs, and other campaign coverage and resources.

Politico and Campus Politico
From Capital News company and covers the presidential campaign and other political issues.

PoliticsWest
Denver Post and starting point to keep up with related news (Denver will host the 2008 Democratic National Convention) and tracks news from western United States.

Fact Checking

FactCheck
University Pennsylvania's Annenburg Public Policy Center, and evaluates the accuracy of campaign claims.

Politifact
Offers ruling on claims and sponsored by Saint Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly.

Candidate Information
Map the Candidates
Slate magazine uses Google maps mashup to trace the geography of the 2008 presidential campaign, tracking travel, and linking to local coverage and videos of campaign stops.

Project Vote Smart
Provides extensive amount of information about elected officials, including voting records congressional and legislative, special interest group performance evaluations, campaign finance data, and issue positions from Political Courage Test formerly National Political Awareness Test.

Technology and User-Generated Content
TechPresident
Group blog that focuses on how the Web is being used by presidential campaigns, and how the read-write, interactive nature of the Web allows the public to create content that becomes a part of the campaign conversation. Site also sponsors 10questions where readers can propose questions to be asked of presidential candidates. The top ten are submitted to candidates who provide video response. Also tracks candidate support on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Myspace. Personal Democracy Forum partners with New York Times and MSNBC.

WikitheVoteOpen
Publicly edited encyclopedia of the elections.

"The 51st State: the State of Online"
Written by Laura Gordon-Murnane from November/December issue of Searcher. Article provides a listing of the technological and social features that are available on presidential campaign Web sites as of late summer 2007, and analyzes how candidates, media, and voters are using these tools.

YouTube:You Choose
Candidates respond to questions through videos posted on YouTube.

Survey Research and Political Polling
American National Election Studies (ANES)
Organization has collected U.S. elections data since 1948. Offers a vast series of data and research reports about political participation and electoral behavior.

Pollster
Tracks, aggregates, and analyzes political polls (including presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial races).

Money in Politics
CampaignMoney
Find campaign finance data, including searching for contributions by zip code, individual name or address, and political action committees, as well as post opinions about candidates. Special sections on contributions made by celebrities, industries, companies, and more.

Follow the Money
Number of organizations provide data about federal-level campaign finance contributions, by the National Institute on Money in State Politics provides information on the state level by contributor and industry.

Open Secrets
Center for Responsive Politics provides campaign finance information to other political information services, but this site offers a lot more.