Survey on Danes' attitudes towards the legal reservation (2015)

The Survey on Danes' attitudes towards the legal reservation (Undersøgelse om danskernes holdninger til retsforbeholdet) was a referendum survey conducted in Denmark in connection with the December 3, 2015 referendum on the country’s EU justice and home affairs opt-out. Led by principal investigator Derek Beach at Aarhus University, the study employed a mixed research design combining a rolling cross-section with a post-referendum panel component. The survey comprised three parts: a pre-referendum survey with eight waves (≈300 interviews per wave; 2,567 total), a post-referendum panel of 589 re-interviews from the first waves, and a post-referendum population survey with 1,005 respondents reached via postal invitation, online response, and telephone follow-up. Data were collected between October 12, 2015, and January 5, 2016, covering both the campaign period and the aftermath of the vote. The survey traced Danish citizens’ attitudes toward the opt-out issue over time, enabling analyses of opinion dynamics and individual-level change surrounding the referendum. The Carlsberg Foundation funded the survey instrument for the project 'DKOPT-JHA project - Danish voting behavior and EU attitudes in the opt-out referendum on Justice and Home Affairs’, Grant number CF15-0123. See referendumsurveys.org for more information. When using the data, please cite the publication(s) linked under “Related Works”: Beach, Derek and Daniel Finke (2021) ‘The long shadow of attitudes: differential campaign effects and issue voting in EU referendums.’, West European Politics, 44(7): 1482-1505. DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2020.1780829