This file of presidential election year platforms originated with the work of sociologist Zvi Namenwirth, who analyzed party platforms from 1844 to 1964 in one of the pioneering uses of computers for content analysis. Namenwirth later deposited his massive computer file in the Roper Center data archive at the University of Connecticut. The Roper Center kindly allowed me to reformat their uppercase file and combine it with all the major party platforms from 1968 through 1996 for distribution on my web site.

Some files were later downloaded from the American Presidency Project to correct typographical errors in the orignal early files. Thanks to Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley for creating the Online files.