The Electoral Contention and Violence (ECAV) dataset contains spatially and temporarily disaggregated data on over 18,000 nonviolent and violent election-related contentious events and covers 2,008 competitive national election rounds in 136 countries between 1990 and 2012. Conceptualizing electoral contention as nonviolent or violent acts of contestation by state or nonstate actors that relate to the electoral process and using event-day-location as unit of analysis, ECAV allows for a global and subnational assessment of nonviolent and violent electoral contention.