Election Studies

Studies on political attitudes and voting behavior

Election studies are a particular data focus of GESIS. Many important German election studies on federal and state elections have been prepared and made available with special attention since the 1970s, such as the Kiel election studies and studies by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. We also provide the commercially collected data of the Politbarometer of the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen or the ARD-DeutschlandTREND for scientific research.

GESIS has also been cooperating closely with renowned institutions and political scientists in the European and international field of election studies for decades. These include the studies of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) or the studies of the European Election Studies (EES) program, which have been conducted since 1979.

The German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) was also launched in this tradition and has been conducted in close cooperation between the DGfW and GESIS from the outset.

German election studies

German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES)

The German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) has been collecting methodologically diverse and high-quality data on the political attitudes and behavior of eligible voters and candidates since 2009.

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Politbarometer

The annual data cumulations of the Politbarometer of the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen provide a detailed picture of political opinions and attitudes. Our time series allow longitudinal analyses on various topics.

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Federal elections

Various studies (cross-sections, partly panel data or cumulations) are available for all federal elections since 1949. These include the Kiel election studies and studies by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

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State elections

The data available for the state elections dates back to 1962 and was collected as representative population surveys, usually before the elections.

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Other surveys

Here you will find surveys on political attitudes independent of election dates. The surveys include the ARD-DeutschlandTREND (since 1998), the Forsa-Bus (since 1991) and the surveys of the Federal Government.

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European and international election studies

European Election Studies (EES, PIREDEU)

This program collects surveys on voter turnout and behaviour in the context of elections to the European Parliament, some of which were collected as early as 1979 and include surveys and other data collection methods.

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Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES)

Since 1996, the CSES has integrated data from post-election surveys from around 40 countries. It includes questions on political attitudes and voting behavior, demographic data and macro data on the political systems of the participating countries.

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