By André Blais (University of Montreal), Laura B. Stephenson (University of Western Ontario), Damien Bol (King’s College London), and Filip Kostelka (University of Montreal) on behalf of the MEDW Team
The MEDW team is proud to announce that all survey data from the Making Electoral Democracy Work project are now available in open access in the Harvard Dataverse. In total, this represents 32 studies from national, subnational and supranational elections, which were conducted in seven established democracies between 2010 and 2016 (see the list below). The core data module is an aggregated dataset that combines information from 27 surveys fielded in 11 regions from five countries (Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland) and that spans over 40 000 respondents. The project dataverse also includes 5 “special datasets” (additional studies conducted in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden) that are not incorporated in the aggregated dataset but contain a large number of questions asked in the regular MEDW surveys.
The data are characterized by several unique features that may be of interest to political scientists and students of political behavior, mass political attitudes, and multi-level governance. They notably provide the same kind of information for different levels of government, which allows for cross-level comparison and the study of cross-level interactions. The topics covered by the surveys include satisfaction with democratic and government performance, political efficacy, election importance, perceptions of the voting act, attachment to different levels of government, perceived corruption, value orientations on economic and social issues, closeness to political parties, exposure to campaign information and mobilization efforts, electoral and non-electoral political participation, pre-election voting intentions, and reported vote choice (see the aggregated dataset codebook). Almost all of the studies are two-wave panels, in which a pre-election questionnaire was administered approximately one week before the election and a post-election questionnaire was launched in the period immediately after the election. While most attitudes were measured in the first wave, electoral participation, vote choice and non-electoral political participation were measured in the second wave. This allows for greater confidence in the direction of causality (i.e., from attitudes to behavior). Last but not least, the questionnaires feature several experimental questions where half of the respondents were asked a different wording of the same question or the same questions in a different order.
The MEDW project dataverse contains the Aggregated Dataset folder and 6 (sub) dataverses with election-specific datasets: “MEDW Canada”, “MEDW France”, “MEDW Germany”, “MEDW Spain”, “MEDW Switzerland” and “MEDW Special Datasets”. All datasets are in Stata (13) format and are supplemented with codebooks, questionnaires (in the original language and / or in English), and technical reports.
For more information, access the project dataverse and do not hesitate to contact André Blais ([email protected]).
We thank all members of the MEDW team who contributed to the project and to the production of the data. They include Christopher H. Achen, John Aldrich, Christopher Anderson, Vincent Arel-Bundock, David Austen-Smith, Laurie Beaudonnet, Stefanie Beyens, Marian Bohl, Maxime Coulombe, Charles Crabtree, William Cross, Fred Cutler, Jean-François Daoust, Ruth Dassonneville, Kris Deschouwer, Delia Dumitrescu, Jim Engle-Warnick, David Farrell, Fernando Feitosa, Benjamin Ferland, Martial Foucault, Carol Galais, François Gélineau, Elisabeth Gidengil, Matt Golder, Sona Golder, Thomas Gschwend, Marc Guinjoan, Eric Guntermann, Phillip Harfst, Maxime Héroux-Legault, Rafael Hortala-Vallve, Indridi Indridason, Ekrem Karakoc, Anja Kilibarda, Hanspeter Kriesi, Simon Labbé St-Vincent Simon, Romain Lachat, Ignacio Lago Peñas, Jean-François Laslier, Jean-Michel Lavoie, Andrea Lawlor, Louis Massicotte, Mike Medeiros, Claude Montmarquette, Alexander Morin-Chassé, Ben Nyblade, Scott Pruysers, Paul Quirk, Victoria Savalei, Semra Sevi, Shane Singh, Karine van der Straeten, Katherine Sullivan, Charles Tessier, Tom Verthé, and Steffen Zittlau.
The 32 MEDW studies were transformed into 23 datasets that are archived in the project dataverse. This is their exhaustive list:
“Making Electoral Democracy Work” [aggregated dataset]
In the (sub)dataverse “MEDW Canada”:
“MEDW 2011 Ontario Provincial Election Study”
“MEDW 2012 Quebec Provincial Election Study”
“MEDW 2015 Canadian Federal Election Study”
In the (sub)dataverse “MEDW France”:
“MEDW 2012 French Legislative Election Study”
“MEDW 2014 French Municipal Election Study”
“MEDW 2014 French European Election Study”
In the (sub)dataverse “MEDW Germany”:
“MEDW 2013 Lower Saxony State Election Study”
“MEDW 2013 Lower Saxony Federal Election Study”
“MEDW 2014 Lower Saxony European Election Study”
“MEDW 2013-2014 Bavaria Panel Study”
In the (sub)dataverse “MEDW Spain”:
“MEDW 2011 Spanish National Election Study”
“MEDW 2012 Catalan Regional Election Study”a
“MEDW 2014 Spanish European Election Study”
“MEDW 2015 Madrid Regional Election Study”
In the (sub)dataverse “MEDW Switzerland”:
“MEDW 2011 Zurich Cantonal Election Study”
“MEDW 2011 Swiss Federal Election Study”
“MEDW 2011 Lucerne Cantonal Election Study”
In the (sub)dataverse “MEDW Special Datasets”:
“MEDW 2010 North Rhine-Westphalia State Election Study”
“MEDW 2010 Swedish National Election Study”
“MEDW 2012 French Presidential Election Study”
“MEDW 2014 Belgian National Election Study”
“MEDW 2016 Spanish National Election Study”
