Detailed information about voter behavior is prized by campaign organizers, interest groups, and others in the world of election politics. It also has extraordinary value for political scientists trying to understand what drives election turnout and other important issues.

Now, thanks to Labels & Lists Inc., a company that gathers such data, faculty members and students have access to much of this treasure, a development that puts Princeton at the forefront of research on voting.

The company, headed by Bruce C. Willsie ’86, a Woodrow Wilson School graduate, has given the University’s Department of Politics voting data—stripped of names, telephone numbers, and addresses so that it cannot be traced to individuals—pertaining to some 75 million voters in 11 states. That’s about half of the registered voters in the country.

With such expansive information, Princeton researchers now have the tools to explore subjects of interest to scholars as well as anyone concerned about the democratic process, according to Professor of Politics Christopher H. Achen, an expert on U.S. voting patterns and part of an international team writing a book on voter turnout. For example, the data could help establish whether people form a lifetime habit of voting if they begin casting ballots when young—a critical consideration for those weighing the efficacy of high school voter-registration drives.

Willsie realized Labels & Lists’s data might be useful to Princeton after researchers from another university purchased information from the company. And Achen, who says researchers have been frustrated by a dearth of affordable voting data, quickly grasped the value of the information: public voting records, from a number of large states, merged with demographic information purged of identifying details.

“No other university in the world has a data set like this one,” says Achen, the Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences. “My Canadian, European, and Asian friends who study voter turnout are quite jealous.” The only restriction on the data, to be housed in Firestone Library, is that it be used for research and scholarly analysis solely, and that it be provided just to individuals or organizations directly affiliated with Princeton.

“In my estimation, the voting history, together with political boundary information and other demographics such as age and party affiliation, could yield some of the most interesting analytical results,” said Willsie, an Annual Giving volunteer and member of the Schools Committee.

Labels & Lists, founded in 1975 and based in Bellevue, Washington, is one of two leading firms in its field; the other, Aristotle International, Inc., was co-founded by another Princetonian, John Aristotle Phillips ’78.

With the new information, Princeton researchers will be able to explore such questions as why national efforts to simplify registration have had little impact on voter turnout and what attracts recent immigrants to the polls.

“When scholars studying voter turnout around the world are asked where the world’s great laboratory for the study of their subject is located, they will not hesitate. ‘It’s at Princeton,’” Achen said.