Mapping the democratic accountability of elected prosecutors
This project collects information about locally elected prosecutors. While the district attorneys in big cities receive a lot of scrutiny, prosecutors in suburban and rural areas are essentially unknown.
As a general matter, voters do not know much about their local prosecutors. A recent survey found that a majority of Americans do not realize that their local prosecutor is elected. And even those voters who wish to inform themselves discover that prosecutors’ most important decisions are often hidden from public view.
By supplying election and campaign finance information for every elected prosecutor in the country, the Prosecutors and Politics Project allows members of the public to find out more about their local prosecutor and play a role in ensuring that the decisions being made in their name are consistent with their own beliefs and values.
About the Prosecutors and Politics Project
The Prosecutors and Politics Project is a nonpartisan research initiative housed at the University of North Carolina School of Law. It conducts data-driven research into the role that prosecutors play in the criminal justice system, both as key public officials and as political actors.
Learn more about the Prosecutors and Politics Project. Read about our major research projects, download the raw data from those projects, and keep up-to-date with our findings and recommendations through traditional media and on social media.
About the Prosecutor Mapping Project
This interactive map was created using data from the Prosecutors and Politics Project’s ongoing study of prosecutor elections and campaign contribution. That study collects key information for each of the 45 states that elect their local prosecutors. The interactive map contains information for every election from 2014 through 2019. Data for elections that were held in subsequent years is being uploaded on an ongoing basis, and pre-2014 data will be uploaded as it becomes available.
Our dataset includes name, party affiliation, and incumbency status of each candidate who ran for local prosecutor. The dataset also identifies which candidate won each election and the percentage of total votes each candidate received.
We designate an election as “contested” if two or more candidates ran for the office in either the primary election or the general election. In those jurisdictions where only the primary election was contested, voters who were not affiliated with that party may not have been authorized to vote. Thus, our designation of an uncontested election means that no voter in the jurisdiction had an opportunity to choose their local prosecutor.
Our data comes from public sources. When available, the data was obtained from official election records. When those official records were not available or when they did not include the relevant information, data was obtained from other websites, media accounts, or direct email or telephone communication with local officials. Despite these efforts, we were not able to obtain all variables for every election.
The campaign finance information in our dataset includes only direct contributions to candidates and their campaign committees; it does not include independent expenditures by PACs and other third parties. For election years prior to 2020, we downloaded data when available, and otherwise entered information that was not in database format by hand, which undoubtedly introduced minor errors. For election cycles in 2020 and later, campaign finance records have been or will be uploaded in their original format. Some candidates are exempt from campaign finance laws, and even for non-exempt candidates, some localities were unable to produce the relevant records. As a result, some data is missing from our dataset.
Acknowledgements
Many students at the University of North Carolina helped to gather the information necessary produce this report, including Matthew Baruch, Andrew Benton, Jordan Rennie Briggs, Lindsay Byers, Alessandra Cacares Torres, Clarissa Cashmore, Richard Chen, James Clarke, Jennifer Cofer, Matthew Costa, Dale Davis, Hannah Dionne, Patrick Figuerado, Sabrina Gamero, Rachel M. Geissler, Miranda Goot, Michael Griffith, Mackenzie Harmon, Sarah Hoffman, Jacob Johnson-Wright, Brittainy Joyner, Matthew Ledford, Grace Lempp, Dana Lingenfelser, Ashley Nicole Longman, Foram Majmudar, Carly O’Dell, Abigail Perdew, Adam Renkiewicz, Cayla Rodney, Taylor Rodney, Alison Rossi, Alexander Rutgers, Alan Sides, Shin Song, Quentin Stephenson, Tyler Ventura, Anna Washa, and Sam Zahn.
This study was made possible by generous gifts from the Vital Projects Fund, Inc.