German Pre- and Post-Election Study, 1969

This study was conducted in two waves, before and after the election carried out in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1969. The pre-election interview examined in detail the respondents' interest in politics and their sources of political information. The questionnaire also included an inquiry into the major problems facing Germany and the ability of the principal parties to deal with these issues. A number of measures were used to evaluate the political parties, including a series of semantic differential items. Open-ended questions assessed the competence and personal appeal of various politicians. Considerable attention was devoted to the issue orientation of voters, dealing with topics such as the reevaluation of the German mark, recognition of the German Democratic Republic, codetermination, radicalism in the Federal Republic, and other foreign and domestic policy topics. The respondents' voting patterns in the 1965 election and their anticipated behavior in the 1969 election were also ascertained, as well as their expectations about the election outcome. The post-election interview dealt with the respondents' actual voting behavior. Additional information was gathered on the long-term voting history of the respondents and their fathers. Variables probed attitudes toward the new government coalition and perceptions of the tasks ahead for the government. Questions tapping the respondents' evaluations of the political parties and candidates were repeated from the first wave, as well as the items assessing the major problems facing the republic. An additional component of the dataset consists of 1970 Census data for each respondent's community, merged with the respective respondent's survey data. These aggregate environmental variables describe the community in terms of marital status, religion, employment status, and industry of employment. Demographic data for the individual respondent cover age, sex, marital status, occupation, and income.