Welcome to the web page for the Gubernatorial Campaign Finance Law Database, compiled by Jennifer M. Jensen and Thad Beyle, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina.   Frank Vander Valk, then a doctoral student at the University at Albany, provided extensive research assistance.

We ask that you include a citation in all papers that use these data. Please refer to the database as the Gubernatorial Campaign Finance Database, compiled by Jennifer M. Jensen and Thad Beyle. For further information, see the following:

Jensen, Jennifer M. and Thad Beyle. 2003. "Of Footnotes, Missing Data, and Lessons for 50-State Data Collection: The Gubernatorial Campaign Finance Project, 1977-2001." State Politics and Policy Quarterly 3 (Summer): 203-214.

These data are presented in a series of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. There are five sets of spreadsheets; each set has individual spreadsheets detailing the laws in different years. <!--break-->The data were collected from the U.S. Federal Election Commission's Campaign Finance Law series. The FEC published this document triennially starting in 1977; between 1984 and 2000, when we stopped data collection, it was published biennially. Details regarding the database are found in our SPPQ article.

The database has five components, which you can download via the following five zip files. The data are quite straightforward, as explained in our brief codebook. We encourage you to review this information if you plan to use these data.