GERDA: German Election Database

GERDA – German Election Database For the newest versions of the datasets please visit the German Election Database website. The German Election Database provides a comprehensive dataset of local, state, and federal election results in Germany. The data is intended to facilitate research on electoral behavior, representation, and political responsiveness at multiple levels of government. All datasets include turnout and vote shares for major parties. We also provide geographically harmonized files that account for changes in municipal boundaries and mail-in voting districts. Key Features: Municipal Elections: Coverage from 1990 to 2020, including turnout and vote shares for major national parties (SPD, CDU/CSU, FDP, Greens, Die Linke), as well as AfD, Freie Wähler, and others. State Elections: Data on turnout and party vote shares at the municipal level (2006–2019), including major parties and additional parties such as AfD (from 2012). Federal Elections: Municipal-level results since 1980, plus county-level results back to 1953, covering turnout and vote shares for all parties, with special handling of mail-in votes. Harmonization to 2021 Boundaries: Every dataset is also available in a version that aligns geographic units (municipalities/counties) to their 2021 borders. Authors Vincent Heddesheimer ([e-mail]) Hanno Hilbig ([e-mail]) Florian Sichart ([e-mail]) Andreas Wiedemann ([e-mail]) Citation Please cite the following paper when using this dataset: Heddesheimer, Vincent, Hanno Hilbig, Florian Sichart, & Andreas Wiedemann. 2024. “German Election Database.” @article{Heddesheimer2024GermanElections, author = {Heddesheimer Vincent, and Hanno Hilbig, and Florian Sichart and Andreas Wiedemann}, title = {German Election Database}, year = {2024}, url = {https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/q28ex}, doi = {10.31235/osf.io/q28ex} }