Data dictionary: Officeholders

The officeholders data set includes current, elected officeholders for Congress, statewide positions, state legislative positions, as well as elected officials in the top 100 cities by population.

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Office, District (Geography)

column_name	description
state	The state in which the office has jurisdiction (postal abbreviation)
office_id	Ballotpedia unique identifier (stable across officeholders)
office_name	Name of the office
office_level	Level of government: -Federal -State -Local
office_branch	Branch of government: -Executive -Legislative -Judicial
district_id	Ballotpedia unique identifier
district_ocdid	The Open Civic Data Division Identifiers project seeks to assign somewhat predictable and globally unique identifiers to political divisions. This field is not uniformly filled due to data availability.
district_name	Name of district (geographical area) that elects the office.
district_type	Type of district that elects the office: -Country -State -Congress -State Legislative (Upper) -State Legislative (Lower) -County -School District -City-town -Judicial District -Special District -State subdivision -County subdivision -Judicial district subdivision -Special district subdivision -City-town subdivision -School district subdivision
parent_district_id	Ballotpedia unique identifier used to associate a "subdivision" district with its parent (not comprehensive). Example: "X City Council, District 1" and "X City Council, District 2" have a parent district of "X City".
parent_district_name	Name of parent district

Officeholder

column_name	description
officeholder_id	Ballotpedia unique identifier
person_id	Ballotpedia unique identifier (stable across time or offices held)
name	Full name of the officeholder
first_name	First name of the officeholder
last_name	Last name of the officeholder
url	Link to the Ballotpedia profile about this person
gender	One of the following, or NULL: -Male -Female -Neither/Both (if the person explicitly identifies as neither or both of the above)
status	Describes the status of the officeholder. One of the following: -Current -Acting -Elect -Magistrate -Senior
party_affiliation	Primarily for officeholders elected in partisan elections, this is the political party with which they are/were affiliated.
date_assumed_office	Date on which they assumed this office (swearing in date or similar)
appointed_by	If relevant, the name of the person who appointed this officeholder to this office (such as a Governor)
date_appointed	Date of the appointment
date_confirmed	Date of the confirmation (judicial)
date_term_ends	For former or outgoing officeholders, the date on which they left or will leave office

Contact information (add-on)

Contact information is optional, available for an additional charge.

Values are listed below. The "officeholder" contact is the one used in an official capacity, while "personal" represents contacts or accounts that may not relate to the person's current position.

Values:

• officeholder_email

• other_email

• officeholder_website

• personal_website

• officeholder_facebook

• personal_facebook

• officeholder_x

• personal_x

• officeholder_tiktok

• personal_tiktok

• officeholder_instagram

• personal_instagram

• officeholder_youtube

• personal_youtube

• officeholder_mailing_address

• officeholder_phone

• linkedin