Research Infrastructure · Data Engineering
Making Voter Data Usable for Research, at Scale
A fragmented 10TB national voter file became a single analysis-ready dataset now used across political science, economics, and health research.
When UCLA acquired a 10TB national voter file from L2, it arrived as thousands of fragmented, state-level files, too large and inconsistent to use locally.
The Data Science Center chose Redivis to manage the challenge. With Redivis, the DSC integrated the data into a single, analysis-ready dataset with secure, flexible researcher access and full version control for reproducibility.
The dataset now supports interdisciplinary research across UCLA:
- Political Science: election administration (Joshua Ferrer), gentrification (Alexandria Davis)
- Economics: population behavior and public policy
- UCLA Health: health and voting studies (Straus, Thompson, Vavreck, Naeim)
By simplifying access and strengthening reproducibility, the project ensures the data keeps delivering value, for researchers and for democracy.
- Years
- 2023–present
- Tools
-
- Redivis
- Python
- Source
- Originally published ↗