Electoral and Parliamentary Data
Directory of electoral and parliamentary data resources
Campaign finance data (DIME/Stanford)
The Database on Ideology, Money in Politics and Elections (DIME) maintained by Stanford University, contains "over 500 million itemised political contributions made by individuals and organizations to local, state, and federal elections covering from 1979 to 2020. A corresponding database of candidates and committees provides additional information on state and federal elections." Data files and documentation are available at this link.
Chapel Hill Expert Surveys (CHES)
Chapel Hill Expert Surveys provide estimates of political party positions on "European integration, ideology and policy issues for national parties in a variety of European countries." CHES provides a 1999-2014 trend file, and individual waves for 1999, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2019.
Comparative Campaign Dynamics Datasets
Comparative Campaign Dynamics Datasets - maintained by researchers at the University of Mannheim, Washington University, St. Louis and the University of Texas, Austin - provide "information on ideological cohesion and ambiguity of party positions along with information on framing effects by competing parties and the media. The data covers the policy standpoints parties and their representatives have communicated in the media along with valence-related statements, such as references to competence or integrity." Ten countries are covered: Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom. Full details are on this project page.
Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES)
CSES is a collaborative programme of cross-national electoral research conducted in 54 states over five modules; 1996-2021. The project is coordinated by the Center for Political Studies and GESIS. CSES is composed of three parts: "First, a common module of public opinion survey questions is included in each participant country's post-election study. These 'micro' level data include vote choice, candidate and party evaluations, current and retrospective economic evaluations, evaluation of the electoral system itself, in addition to standardized sociodemographic measures. Second, district level data are reported for each respondent, including electoral returns, turnout, and the number of candidates. Finally, system or 'macro' level data report aggregate electoral returns, electoral rules and formulas, and regime characteristics."
Comprehensive European Parliament Electoral Data (COMEPELDA)
COMEPELDA consolidates information on European Parliament (EP) elections into one source, providing information on formal electoral rules as well as national-level and district-level election results for parties and individual politicians (including full candidate lists). The use of existing and new key variables makes it easy to link the data across the different units of observation (country, party, candidate, MEP) and join them with external information.
Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA)
The Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA) contains results of 1,900 elections from 168 countries worldwide. European Parlimentary data is also provided. Register online to access the data in zipped files with PDF documentation. The database provides results "at the constituency level for lower house legislative elections from around the world." First-time users should register on this CLEA page.
Dataset of Electoral Volatility and its Internal Components in Western Europe
The Dataset of Electoral Volatility and its Internal Components in Western Europe, covering 1945 to 2015 - is maintained by researchers at the CISE - Italian Center for Electoral Studies, LUISS 'Guido Carli' Rome and University of Florence. The dataset provides observations on electoral volatility and internal components of 'regeneration' (i.e. electoral volatility caused by vote switching between parties that enter or exit from the system) and 'alteration' (i.e. electoral volatility caused by vote switching between existing parties) in parliamentary elections (lower houses) in 19 countries of post-war Western Europe. The dataset (Excel format) and codebook (PDF) can be downloaded via the LUISS platform.
Dataset of Electoral Volatility in the European Parliament elections since 1979
Dataset of Electoral Volatility in the European Parliament elections since 1979 provides data on "electoral volatility and its internal components in the elections for the European Parliament (EP) in all European Union (EU) countries since 1979 or the date of their accession to the Union. It also provides data about electoral volatility for both the class bloc and the demarcation bloc." The dataset is maintained by researchers at CISE, the Italian Center for Electoral Studies LUISS 'Guido Carli', Rome.
Dataset of New Parties and Party System Innovation in Western Europe since 1945
The Dataset of New Parties and Party System Innovation in Western Europe since 1945 "identifies and lists all the new parties emerged in Western Europe since 1945 and provides data about party system innovation, defined as the aggregate level of ‘newness’ recorded in a party system at a given election. Data are based on parliamentary elections (lower house) in 20 Western European countries since 1945. This dataset covers the entire universe of Western European elections held after World War II under democratic regimes. Data for Greece, Portugal and Spain have been collected after their democratisations in the 1970s." The dataset is maintained by the Italian Center for Electoral Studies LUISS 'Guido Carli' Rome.
Electoral data archive (ICPSR)
EUI members have access to international election data from the ICPSR data archive. The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) maintains a large-scale repository of over 16,000 studies associated with approximately 85,000 datasets, hosted by the University of Michigan. Use the ICPSR data catalogue to locate study numbers. Downloading is by Library Information Specialist: send the study number(s) and preferred data format, to [email protected]
EP Election Results at Constituency Level (1979-2029)
Compiled by the EUI European Governance and Politics Programme (Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies) the European Parliament Results at Constituency Level database comprises "results at the level of single constituencies for all EU member states and for all elections to the European Parliament from 1979 to 2019. Data include information on eligible electorate, voters (turnout), valid votes and votes by parties, and seats for member states, constituencies and parties, always in absolute figures and percentages."
EUDO data on European democracy (EUI)
The European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO) at the European University Institute generates data on democratic practices in Europe, public opinion, political elites, media, political parties, institutional reform and citizenship: (i) 2019 euandi European Parliament voting device application data (ii) 2014 euandi European Parliament voting device application data, and (iii) 2009 EU Profiler European Parliament voting device application data.
European Election Studies (EES/GESIS)
The GESIS social science data archive provides access to European Election Studies generated by the European Election Study (EES) Research Group, including election-related special Eurobarometer surveys since 1979. European Election Studies cover participation and voting behaviour in European Parliament elections and include topics such as "the evolution of a political community and public sphere in the European Union, citizens' perceptions of and preferences about the EU political regime, and the evaluation its political performance." Coverage includes: European Election Studies (EES and other voter studies); Political Elite studies in the EES context and beyond; Euromanifesto studies; Media studies and Further Eurobarometer on European Elections. European Election Studies are accessible via the GESIS platform.
European NUTS-level election database
The European NUTS-Level Election Database (EU-NED) "provides national and European parliamentary election results on the level of Eurostat’s NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 administrative units, covering all EU (& associated) countries over the period 1990-2020. EU-NED is integrated with the Party Facts platform, allowing for a seamless integration of a wealth of party-level data. EU-NED is optimized for combination with Eurostat’s Regional Database."
Inter-Parliamentary Union Parline database (IPU)
The Inter-Parliamentary Union Parline database on national parliaments contains information on the structure and working methods of 266 parliamentary chambers in 188 countries. A glossary provides an overview of the structure of each parliament.
Manifesto Project Database (WZB)
The Manifesto Project Database (WZB, Berlin) contains data and documents for measuring the policy preferences and programmes of political parties. "The project is based on quantitative content analyses of parties’ election programmes from more than 50 countries covering all free, democratic elections since 1945."
Parliament and government composition database (ParlGov)
ParlGov (University of Bremen) contains data on elections and governments for all EU and most OECD countries since 1945. "The database combines approximately 1,400 parties, 680 elections with 5,800 election results and 2,300 governing parties in 960 cabinets." There are four data categories: (i) primary, coded information (database tables); (ii) secondary data: virtual tables (database views based on primary data); (iii) external data: data sets linked to ParlGov (merge tables) and (iv) calculated data: calculated parameters from software (Stata and R) scripts. Retrieve data on the ParlGov platform.
Parltrack
The Parltrack Database provides observations on European MEPs, votes and amendments, combining “information on dossiers, representatives, vote results and committee agendas... that allows the tracking of dossiers using email and RSS. Most of the data presented is also available for further processing in JSON format.” Bulk downloading is also available.
The Party Government Data Set (PGDS)
The Party Government Data Set covers 39 parliamentary democracies from 1945 "or the year these countries became a parliamentary democracy again." Variables in Excel format include duration of government; reasons for termination of government; party in government (cabinet level); type of government (eg. coalition); total elected seats and ideological disposition of government and parliament. PGDS is collated at the University of Amsterdam.
Party Systems and Governments Observatory (PSGo)
The Party Systems and Governments Observatory provides data on the party systems and government cabinets of democratic European states from 1848 to 2019. PSGo also contains information on a range of party system indicators "from party, and party system institutionalisation scores, to electoral volatility and polarisation via the number of parties and electoral disproportionality." 68 historical political regimes are covered. The scope of the database is explained on this PSGo page.
Political Data Yearbook (EJPR)
The Political Data Yearbook provides data on elections, national referenda, changes in government, and institutional reforms in the European Union and eight non-EU countries since 1992. The Yearbook is published by the European Journal of Political Research (EJPR) on behalf of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR).
Psephos election data portal
Psephos is an election data portal curated by Dr Adam Carr, providing global election coverage, constituency maps and a calendar of forthcoming elections.
Voteview (USA)
Voteview is a database of "every congressional roll call vote in American history on a map of the United States and on a liberal-conservative ideological map including information about the ideological positions of voting Senators and Representatives... Ideological positions are calculated using the DW-NOMINATE (Dynamic Weighted NOMINAl Three-step Estimation)."
VoteWatch Europe data
VoteWatch Europe provides roll-call data and voting information for the European Parliament and the EU Council from 2004 to 2022. The VoteWatch project was founded by Simon Hix, Doru Frantescu and Sara Hagemann, and uses roll-call data collection and analysis techniques developed by Prof. Hix and Dr. Abdul Noury. Users should cite: 'Simon Hix, Doru Frantescu and Sara Hagemann (2022) VoteWatch Europe European Parliament and EU Council Voting Data, September 2022.'
Data homepage
Contact: [email protected]
Page last updated on 19 April 2024