Decisions about how to run and reform elections must be based on an accurate understanding of how elections actually work and promise to work under different rules. To encourage understanding of our democracy, FairVote pursues objective research and innovative analysis about the results and consequences of our elections and potential electoral reforms.

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The Voting and Democracy Research Center focuses on helping Americans better understand their elections, by presenting informative and objective research on the results and consequences of our elections. The Research Center features FairVote’s ground-breaking analysis of elections, in particular its Monopoly Politics report and its data collections on plurality elections in the United States, redistricting in all 50 states and state election results.

FairVote currently produces various reports that highlight entrenched incumbency and its roots in winner-take-all elections and redistricting, alongside discussion of what we think are essential solutions for addressing the problems ascribed to political gerrymandering. Our work plays key a role in the developing debate about redistricting reform within single member district plans, with a sensitivity toward the impact of reform on voting rights for communities of color.

Our analysis also addresses other electoral questions such as proposals for “top two” primaries, traditional runoff elections and the roots of partisan polarization. We promote public access to a range of election data, which generally is not available even to researchers.

For a full selection of our new and archived reports from 1993 on, see the column on the left.