Election Study 1990 (Politbarometer East)

The Politbarometer has been conducted since 1977 on an almost monthly basis by the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen on behalf of the Second German Television (ZDF). Since 1990, this database has also been available for the new German states. The survey focuses on the opinions and attitudes of the voting-age population in the Federal Republic on current political issues, parties, politicians, and voting behavior. From 1990 to 1995 and from 1999 onward, the Politbarometer surveys were conducted separately both in the newly formed eastern and in the western German states (Politbarometer East and Politbarometer West). The separate monthly surveys of a year are integrated into a cumulative data set that includes all surveys of a year and all variables of the respective year. Starting in 2003, the Politbarometer short surveys, collected with varying frequency throughout the year, are integrated into the annual cumulation.<br>Most important problems of the GDR; satisfaction with
democracy; party preference (Sunday question and rank order procedure);
behavior at the polls in the last election; preferred party for the
election to an all-German parliament; sympathy scale for parties and
politicians; satisfaction with achievements of the GDR government, the
Federal Government and the opposition parties; preferred government
coalition; time of personal voting decision; satisfaction with election
result; judgement on the grand coalition in the GDR; preference for
federal chancellor; Kohl or Lafontaine or the discussion about the
coming unity as most important issue of the election campaign;
estimated changes in the election results with other top candidates for
the SPD and the CDU/CSU; attitude to unification of the two German
states; judgement on unification progress; desired name for united
Germany; judgement on personal consequences of reunification;
advantages and disadvantages for the GDR population through
unification; understanding for emigrants; feeling oneself as citizen of
the GDR or as German; attitude to introduction of the DM in the GDR;
support for the unification policies of Helmut Kohl or Oskar
Lafontaine; preferred seat of government and Federal Parliament; job
worries; judgement on democracy in the Federal Republic; basic attitude
to socialism; planned vacation destination; preferred point in time for
all-German elections and assumed election winner; self-classification
on a left-right continuum; attitude to a withdrawal of Soviet military
forces from the GDR; feared reversal of the democratic development in
the GDR; attitude to criminal prosecution of STASI employees and
assumed further activities of the State Security Service; judgement on
one´s own economic situation as well as the economic situation of the
GDR and its further development; judgement on the economic situation in
the FRG; issue relevance and issue competence of the parties regarding
economic questions; party primarily responsible for the problems of the
GDR economy; attitude to abortion; judgement on the position of the
parties on the abortion question, on the question of asylum-seekers and
on the question of financing the costs of German unity; interest in TV
news and newspaper reports on foreign policy; sympathy scale for the
USA, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain as well as for the
leading politicians of these countries; use of picture magazines and
magazines; interest in opinion polls and influence of results from
opinion surveys on one´s own voting decision; judgement on the election
campaign; attendance at an election meeting and judgement on the
content of this event; interest in politics.