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German Longitudinal Election Study

Over three subsequent periods of funding, the GLES is to examine the German federal elec-tions 2009, 2013, and 2017 and therefore will be able to track the German electoral process over an extended period of time and at an unprecedented level of detail. The principal investigators of the study are Hans Rattinger (University of Mannheim), Sigrid Roßteutscher (University of Frankfurt), Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck (University of Mannheim) and Bernhard Weßels (Social Science Research Center Berlin). Evelyn Bytzek (University of Frankfurt) serves as the project manager, and several research assistants at each of the involved institutions are responsible for carrying out the study at the operational level. As there is no academic field organization in Germany (except for smaller CATI studios at some universities), most of the fieldwork is assigned to private institutes.

The GLES will comprise various, interrelated components at each of the three next elections:

  • An extensive face-to-face pre- and post-election cross section survey of a random sample of voters (evenly split into pre- and post-election subsamples) will form the core of the study. Insofar the GLES will continue the tradition of electoral research in Germany (and many other countries). To allow for in-depth analyses of how today’s individualized voters choose at elections, this survey will encompass a large number of variables to account for as many potentially relevant predictors of vote choices as possible, and it will include a large number of cases to allow for meaningful analyses of even small subsections of the electorate (component 1).
  • Several components are to allow for an in-depth analysis of the short-term dynamics preceding elections. The GLES will include a rolling cross-section (RCS) campaign survey that allows for tracing developments of public opinion in response to parties’ campaigning and media coverage at the aggregate level on a day-to-day basis (based on a random sample of voters, and conducted by telephone). This pre-election study will be complemented by a post-election panel wave to allow for the individual-level analysis of relationships between orientations held during the campaign and those held at the end of the campaign, including actual voting decisions (component 2). Since it is mandatory to observe effects of campaigns at the individual level in the pre-election phase, this component will be complemented by a short-term campaign panel survey, which will be conducted based on an online access panel (component 3). These two survey components (whose content will match the core parts of component 1) will be accompanied by studies examining the context of voting: A campaign media content analysis (component 4) focuses on the most important issues, candidate profiles and evaluations by the media, the parties’ reported electoral prospects and their coalition signals. Additionally, as in recent elections the parties’ leading candidates’ TV debates have quickly become the key events of election campaigns the GLES will include a detailed study of the conduct and effects of the TV debates (component 5). Moreover, to be able to assess the electoral effects of local district candidates’ personal electioneering, the study will include a candidate campaign survey (component 6). Components 4 to 6 will allow to draw a comprehensive picture of the supply side of elections. Independent of the GLES project itself, but supplementing it in one important respect, there will also be a medium-term tracking of public opinion by means of monthly online surveys during the six months preceding the 2009 election, to capture important developments preceding the campaign itself (component X). Together, the short-term components of the GLES and the additional component X will provide unprecedented insights into the pre-election dynamics of voters’ orientations, as well as into the electoral context, constituted by the parties, their candidates, and the media. They are to provide a detailed and fine-grained examination of individual and aggregate level changes on the part of voters as they are brought about by processing the information presented to them by parties, candidates, and mass media.
  • As opinion formation on the part of voters does not stop when a campaign is over, but carries on over the entire electoral period up until the next election, a full understanding of the electoral process requires to observe not only one election and the campaign that precedes it, but several elections in succession, using an integrated set of instruments for long-term observation. Restricting the project to only one election would preclude any meaningful analysis of the key question that poses itself with regard to the future of the electoral process in Germany, i.e., the amount of electoral change that occurs from one election to the next, its nature and causes. A long-term panel survey, which – based on component 1 – interviews the same respondents at all three elections included in the GLES project is to provide deep insights into the extent and patterns of electoral change (component 7). A continuous long-term tracking survey, conducted online over the entire electoral cycles, will allow for the close observation of the dynamics in-between elections of voters’ perceptions and evaluations of parties and politicians, including the analysis of the impact of second-order elections (component 8). For a better understanding of the reasons behind these dynamics, a parallel long-term media and event analysis (component 9) will accompany it. By combining these two components it will be possible to explain changes in the course of parties’ popularity. Taking second-order elections (at the state (Land) and European level) into account will provide data allowing to analyze the impact of such elections on national elections, thereby closing a major gap in German electoral research.

The proposed project comprises a major long-term effort in social science data collection in Germany. In its basic approach, scope and ambition it is inspired by the best programs of national election studies of the world, such as the American National Election Study (ANES), the British Election Study (BES), or the National Annenberg Election Study (NAES). It will produce a wealth of data that will be shared with the entire community of electoral researchers in Germany and other countries as well as all other interested social scientists.

The GLES design in detail:

Figure 1 provides an overview of the various GLES components and their timing with regard to the federal election of 2009. For the elections of 2013 and 2017 analogous designs are planned. The long-term components are to link these elections so that integrated analyses become possible. All survey components are connected by a largely identical core questionnaire that is complemented by component-specific questions that are necessary to attain the particular goals of each component. Additionally, a similar time frame provides the opportunity to compare different components. The cross section survey is at the same time the first wave of the long-term panel; its respondents will be interviewed over three subsequent elections. Parallel to survey components, the campaign media content analysis, the TV debate analysis, the candidate campaign survey and the long-term media and events analysis provide contextual information for the explanation of individual behavior measured by the survey components.

Figure 1: The German Longitudinal Election Study – Overview of Components

Overview of Components