Useful Web Sites for Research

Media outlets

You can find a range of news stories on all areas of politics at the Lexis-Nexis web site, which is available through the Davidson College Library at http://www.davidson.edu/administrative/library/refer/govern.htm.

If you want to find articles on a senator's reelection campaign, go to this page of Lexis-Nexis.  Type your senator's name into one of the fields.  Change the search criterion from "Headline" (the default) to "Full Text."  Then, find the field lower on the page containing "Alabama."  Change this field to that of your senator.  Finally, click on search.  Lexis-Nexis will then find articles (from the last six months) mentioning your senator in newspapers in your senator's state.  

A range of organizations and sites follow and analyze the coverage provided by various news outlets.  These organizations include 

Demographic information

To find economic and demographic statistics on individual states and congressional districts, turn to the web site of the Census Bureau

Political information

Congressional Quarterly's web site is now available to Davidson students and faculty.  The web address is http://oncongress.cq.com/home/home.jsp .  

Extensive information on Congress and its members is available at the web sites for the two congressional chambers, www.house.gov and www.senate.gov

For data on campaign spending in any federal election, visit the web site of the Center for Responsive Politics (www.crp.org) 

Information on candidates' political positions is available at www.vote-smart.org

For state-by-state polling information on the presidential race, visit www.electyou.com/electoralmap.htm

To learn about the two parties' efforts to win congressional elections, you can visit their congressional campaign committees' web sites: