Its enduring contribution was the long-running series of volumes, America Votes, which for the first time provided standard and reliable statistics for the results of major elections in all 50 states.

(The biennial compilations, published by Congressional Quarterly's imprint, CQ Books, were later co-produced with Scammon associate Alice McGillivray.

Scammon also served as a consultant to NBC News in the 1960 general election, working with the RCA computers and methods to call state-by-state totals for the Presidential race.

According to the Washington Post, while serving as Director of the Census, Scammon was "a personal adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson on public opinion and political trends.

[4] As an author, Scammon's most famous work was The Real Majority: An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate (1970),[5] co-authored with Ben J. Wattenberg.