The Politbarometer - in tune with the times since 1977

Since 1977, the Politbarometers have been conducted approximately monthly by the Research Group on Elections for the Second German Television. Every month, all viewers are presented with the opinions of German voters, including the famous "Sunday Question".

The Politbarometer Data
The monthly representative surveys on the attitudes of the German electorate towards parties, politicians and the current agenda are prepared and documented by GESIS and are available as annual cumulatives as well as time series.

Who is the data for?
The data are an important instrument of political opinion and attitude research and allow the investigation of opinions and attitudes of the voting population in the Federal Republic of Germany towards current events, parties and politicians over time. The data and documents are made available for download free of charge for academic research and teaching.

What formats are available?
The data and documents include all surveys and all variables of the respective year.
A time series is also available for the survey area West (old federal states). It contains a selection of variables that have been collected repeatedly since 1977.

Data Access

To the Politbarometer Bibliography

Annual Politbarometer cumulation

This cumulated data set comprises the results of all monthly polls conducted in one year. All variables used during that particular year are reflected in the data.

From 1990 through 1995 and since 1999 the Politbarometer surveys were conducted separately in the "New" and "Old" German States ("Politbarometer East" and "Politbarometer West" ).
From 2003 until now Politbarometer Short Polls, which are conducted differently often in a year, were integrated in the annual cumulation.
Politbarometer polls additionally designated as Election Surveys in the study overview are part of the "German elections" database.

Recent annual cumulation

The cumulative file Politbarometer 2022 (ZA7970) is the most recent Politbarometer data set.

Politbarometer time series from 1977 onwards

At the moment the time series is available for the Politbarometer from 1977 (ZA2391). The data set comprises 84 selected variables for the entire period from since 1977. With a total of more than 900.000 respondents and ideally over 500 survey dates an interesting product for further analysis is the result. The corresponding variable report documents the number of survey dates for each variable as well as any change of the question or answer text over the whole period.

As the data collection method of the Politbarometer switched from the initial face-to-face interview to telephone survey by midyear 1988, there is also a basis for an investigation into the methodical aspects of this change. As in some years more than twelve surveys were conducted a variable was added on request of our users. Now there is one variable that serially numbers the surveys of one year and another variable in which the surveys are coded by month of investigation.

Amongst others, the dataset contains the following topics:

voting intention and party preference (opinion poll)
voting behaviour at last Bundestag elections
party skalometer
satisfied with achievements of the federal government and achievements of the opposition parties
satifsfaction with democracy
suitable politicians in leading positions
respondent's interest in politics
self-rating on a left-right scale
evaluation of the economic situation in the FRG and expected further development
personal financial situation and expected development
competence of government and opposition in securing jobs, improving the economic situation in East and West, improving environmental protection and securing pensions
rating the reputation of the party chairmen within their parties
evaluation of the state of society
comparing the state of the German society with the one of the Western European neighbours
attitude towards an increased acceptance of global-political responsibility by the unified Germany
general attitude towards different political topics
profitability of the country's membership in the European Union
most important problems in the FRG
review of the current year and outlook on the coming year
religiousness
trade union membership
federal state and size of town
representative weight as well as the usual complete Politbarometer demography

Bibliographic citation of Politbarometer research data - Example

Ref.: Recommendation on citation of research data:
Jung, Matthias; Schroth, Yvonne; Wolf, Andrea (2013): Politbarometer West 2011 (Cumulated Data Set, incl. Flash). GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA5633 Data file Version 1.2.0, doi:10.4232/1.11616

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