German federal election studies - Bundestagswahlen
Data and documentation

• German National Election studies 1949-2002 (bilingual documentation) accessible by ZACAT

The GESIS-ZA Study Online catalogue ZACAT  provides full access, data analysis and download of data files and documents. Its use is free of charge. Data analyses and data downloads are available after registration.

The database consists of one-off studies, panel studies, and cumulated studies. It comprises representative surveys for all German federal elections held between 1949 and 2002. The set of the national election studies 1949 - 1998 is available on CD-ROM.

No data was available long time for the 1957 federal elections; this gap was closed through the integration of data from a poll conducted by Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach.

As a precursor to this database,

•  the "election surveys" from 1953 – 1976 had been conditioned and supplemented with machine-readable code books in English and German between 1973 and 1978 by the Central Archive in cooperation with the Mannheim-based ZUMA (Zentrum für Umfragen, Methoden und Analysen) and the ICPSR (Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, USA) as part of the "German Election Data Project" (GED).

Concurrently with this work,

• the overview "Variables Over Time: Continuity Guide to the German Election Data Project 1953-1976" was prepared and published by the Central Archive in 1978. At that time the data base comprised 10 surveys with a total of 18,220 respondents and 3500 variables.

The GESIS-ZA has been continuing with this project ever since.

• The report "Overview of Variables from Fifteen 'Election Surveys' on Federal Elections between 1953 and 1987", by Rolf Uher, was published in 1990. Except for the 1949 survey, which was not acquired until 1993, and that for 1957 (made available in 2000), the complete database for the "old" Federal Republic is thus available in two languages for international users.
• In the meantime the database has grown to 30 election surveys from 1949 through 1998 and over 9000 variables, with numbers, names, question and response texts placed in a relational database. These variables were summarized into about 2000 subject categories surveyed more or less regularly over a 50-year period.

• The "Politbarometer"
  for election years since 1980, have been a part of the "Election Studies" collection in the GESIS-ZA (Study Profiles).
• Kiel election studies:
  This data collection comprises individual studies on all German federal elections between 1976 and 1990. For 1976, a trend survey is available (Study Profiles).

The complete holdings of elections studies from Germany and other countries archived can be searched with the  Data holdings catalogue (study descriptions)