Databases, almost by definition, are not interesting things, but election results are an important part of any democracy’s history. My PhD involved studying Solomon Islands electoral politics and as part of this I was lucky enough to be provided with source material sufficient to compile a complete database of Solomon Islands election results from 1967 to the present. Because data should be free and accessible to future generations of researchers (especially those from the country where the data were gathered) I’ve set up a website to house the database. The site includes this page where you can access the data. Also I’ve included a bibliography of work on Solomon Islands politics here. And I’ve created a page of my own analysis of elections in Solomon Islands here. This last page includes the link to a short article on the 2014 elections in Solomon Islands published in the journal Electoral Studies (access to the article is free until 21 September 2015; after that it will be behind a paywall).
I couldn’t have built this database without the help of others. In particular I am grateful to the following people for sharing their data, or for helping me find new data: Jon Fraenkel, Ian Frazer, the staff at the Solomon Islands Electoral Commission; and the Staff of the Solomon Islands Parliamentary Library.
With the support of colleagues, I’m currently working on similar databases for Samoa and Papua New Guinea. If you are interested in a site that gathers election results data from around the world, have a look at the Election Passport website. Also, Clive Moore of the University of Queensland maintains an excellent online resource page related to Solomon Islands.
