Votes & ballots · Presidential election results
Fusion voting
One candidate running on multiple party lines; all lines count for the same candidate.
Fusion voting lets more than one party nominate the same candidate, who then appears on the ballot on several party lines. New York is the best-known fusion state: the Democratic nominee typically also runs on the Working Families line and the Republican nominee on the Conservative line, and a candidate's total is the sum across all of their lines.
Fusion complicates party attribution: whether a fused ballot is credited to 'Democratic' or to the minor party depends on how the reporting source assigns lines. In this dataset, New York's county-level Democratic/Republican attribution of fused ballots differs from the state-level file's in older elections (through 2016). New York's total votes reconcile between the two levels; its county-grain party split in those years should be read with that caveat.
Also known as: electoral fusion, cross-endorsement.
Data: MIT Election Data & Science Lab, Harvard Dataverse.
See fusion voting on the map
Explore presidential election results by state (1976–2024) and county (2000–2024) — margins, swings, and vote shares, election by election. Free while we're in beta.
Fusion voting — FAQ
What is fusion voting in election results data?+
One candidate running on multiple party lines; all lines count for the same candidate. Fusion voting lets more than one party nominate the same candidate, who then appears on the ballot on several party lines. New York is the best-known fusion state: the Democratic nominee typically also runs on the Working Families line and the Republican nominee on the Conservative line, and a candidate's total is the sum across all of their lines.
Why does fusion voting matter?+
Fusion complicates party attribution: whether a fused ballot is credited to 'Democratic' or to the minor party depends on how the reporting source assigns lines. In this dataset, New York's county-level Democratic/Republican attribution of fused ballots differs from the state-level file's in older elections (through 2016). New York's total votes reconcile between the two levels; its county-grain party split in those years should be read with that caveat.
Where does this election data come from?+
All figures come from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL), published on the Harvard Dataverse — state-level presidential returns 1976–2024 and county-level returns 2000–2024. pumsdata is an independent product that makes the data easy to map and compare, and is not affiliated with MEDSL or Harvard.