Commercial Voter Files and the Study of U.S. Politics

… Over the last decade, commercial voter files have become central to the conduct of contemporary election campaigns and are frequently employed by pollsters, journalists and political analysts trying to understand the American electorate. As part of a broader effort at Pew Research Center to shed light on this important but somewhat arcane resource, this report focuses on using the files to enhance our understanding of survey respondents. It also attempts to evaluate the quality of the data provided by the files. CONT.

Pew