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European Election Studies (EES) 2004

The study has two components: a voter study and a media study . In addition, Euromanifesto project collected and coded party manifestos from the relevant parties running in the 2004 European Parliament Elections.

In 2004 no central funding was obtained for a European Parliament election study, and national study directors – rather than the international research group – funded and conducted the 2004 study in 24 of the 25 EU member countries. Some of the activities of the EES 2004 were supported by CONNEX, a network of excellence funded by the European Commission under the 6th framework program.

The EES 2004 Voter Study is a sample survey of the electorates of 24 out of the 25 the member states of the European Union (it was not found possible to conduct a survey in Malta). Due to the lack of central funding not all surveys were conducted immediately after the European elections of  and the sample size varied between countries. Data collection was done by telephone survey in nine countries (Austria, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia), mail surveys in four countries (Belgium , Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands) and face-to-face interviews in 11 countries (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Northern Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and Sweden). The total sample size is approximately 28,900 across 24 EU countries.

Every attempt was made for the questionnaires of this study to be identical across the various member states. However, as the field work was undertaken by 25 different research groups, discrepancies did arise. Despite this, the data file presented here provides the researcher with wide opportunities for comparative analyses across the European Union member states. A large number of questions were identical to those used in the 1989, 1994 and 1999 study, thus permitting over-time comparisons of voter behavior in the 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2004 elections.

The selection of topics and questions includes: electoral behavior including questions on party choices, past voting behavior, voting behavior at the national level, party preferences, and propensity to support particular parties; general political attitudes and behavior based on a question of interest in politics, campaign, most important problems, attitudes regarding EU, left-right self-placement, placement of parties; background characteristics including gender, age, education, religion, media consumption.

The interviews for Voter Study 2004 were not funded by a single organization, but by country-specific funding agencies. Yet the 2004 study was prepared by a group of principal investigators who also contributed to the organization of the previous EES studies.

For a European Election Study (EES) Trend File covering the voter studies from 1989 to 2004 see also the website of Michael Marsh and Slava Mikhaylov at Trinity College Dublin.

Please see here.

Funded mainly by a grant from the German Research Foundation, the Euromanifestos Study  1979 – 2004 coded and collected 588 out of the 708 existing manifestos of the relevant parties issued ahead of the European elections from 1979 to 2004.

The Codebook includes the detailed list of coded Euromanifestos, the Euromanifestos Coding Scheme (EMCS), Euromanifesto Coding Instructions, additional information provided by coders and a description of the Euromanifestos dataset. The collection of manifestos aimed at covering all relevant parties in the member countries. In general, representation in the national parliament identifies the relevance of a political party.

Data and Documents

The party programmes 1979-2014 by country are available as documents or in a coded version.