The Venezuelan Presidential Election Archive: subnational electoral data at the polling station level

Authoritarian regimes maintain strict control over information, making data access a challenge for the public, policymakers, and researchers. Official records are sometimes manipulated, selectively published, or erased, forcing analysts to navigate gaps and inconsistencies. This article introduces the Venezuelan Presidential Election Archive (VENPRES-A), a novel dataset on presidential election results in Venezuela from 2006 to 2024. VENPRES-A consists of three main datasets: a polling station-level dataset with 77,737 observations, a municipal-level dataset with 1,668 observations, and a long-format party-level dataset for the 2024 election with 953,800 observations, providing granular insights into spatial dynamics of political competition, voting behavior, and subnational electoral trends. The dataset leverages a combination of sources: official releases from electoral authorities, official data archives collected by civil society and opposition actors, and secondary sources. Combining these sources was crucial to compensate for the withdrawal of all official records since July 2024. This empirical contribution enhances the study of subnational electoral dynamics in authoritarian environments.