The European Election Study

Post-election surveys designed by political scientists are a common instrument to learn more about vote choices in democracies. This applies also to European Parliament elections. There have been European Election Studies for every EP election since 1979. European Election studies have multiple components, including voter studies (a general population survey after the election), Euromanifesto studies (analyzing the manifestos on which the parties are running), elite studies (Surveying candidates and members of the European Parliament), media studies (analyzing television and newspapers across Europe) and a social media study that focused on the Twitter activity of European party elites. You can find all datasets and descriptions here: https://www.gesis.org/en/services/finding-and-accessing-data/international-survey-programs/european-election-studies. Not all studies are run for every election.

We will focus on the Voter Study, particularly the 2024 version which was designed by the EES 2024 Executive Board, consisting of Sebastian Adrian Popa, Wouter van der Brug, Sara Hobolt, Alexia Katsanidou, Katjana Gattermann, Miriam Sorace, Ilke Toygür, and Claes de Vreese We present the dataset below. While reading, please keep in mind the questions you see below and answer them once you reached the end. At the end, we will provide a link to a platform with an interactive version of the dataset and additional tasks.

Table 1: General Tasks for the Dataset

Tasks
How does the self-reported vote recall question compare to actual voting results in the European Elections 2024?
Voters from which countries in Europe are more left-leaning on average?
Do voters exhibit a coherent belief system or are their political positions unrelated to each other?

Dataset Description

Demographic Data

The European Election Study records the standard demographic variables. Table 2 shows an overview for ten respondents in Germany. Age is recorded as the year of birth, education as age the respondent left education and the left-right position of the respondent on a scale from 0 (=Left) to 10 (=Right).

Table 2: Demographics in the EES

Birthyear	Gender	Education	Country	Left_Right
1991	Female	ISCED 3	Germany	2
1953	Male	ISCED 2	Germany	4
1989	Male	ISCED 5-6	Germany	5
1978	Male	ISCED 2	Germany	5
1953	Male	ISCED 5-6	Germany	5
1957	Male	ISCED 3	Germany	5
1967	Female	ISCED 3	Germany	3
2000	Male	ISCED 3	Germany	9
1961	Female	ISCED 4	Germany	5
1950	Female	ISCED 7-8	Germany	8

We can check the self-reported voting in some of the countries of the dataset. The question in the survey was “Which party did you vote for in the European Parliament elections?” and Figure 1 plots the shares of respondents for each of the main parties after excluding non-voters.

We can plot the average left-right position of respondents. Figure 2 shows that respondents in Croatia, Spain, Germany, and Slovenia consider themselves more to the left and respondents in Estonia, the Netherlands, Romania, and Belgium more to the right.

Ideological Questions

Finally, there are a host of ideological questions included in the EES survey. Table 2 gives an overview of ideological positions and vote choice in Germany. The variables are: Attitudes_trade (0: pro trade liberalization, 10: pro protection of domestic producers), Attitudes_redistribution (0: Pro redistribution from rich to poor, 10: against), Attitudes_samesex (0: Pro same-sex marriage, 10: against), Attitudes_immigration (0: restrictive immigration policies, 10: opposed to restrictive immigration policies), Attitudes_climate_change (0: combating climate change should have priority over economic growth, 10: economic growth should have priority over combating climate change) and EU_integration (0: unification has already gone too far, 10: unification should be pushed further).

Table 2: Ideological Questions in the EES dataset

Attitudes_trade	Attitudes_redistribution	Attitudes_samesex	Attitudes_immigration	Attitudes_climate_change	EU_integration	Vote_EP_rec
NA	10	0	0	0	4	Die Linke
8	2	3	3	4	8	SPD
4	5	4	3	4	7	CDU/CSU
5	5	5	5	5	7	CDU/CSU
2	5	10	10	10	0	AfD
10	5	1	10	8	0	AfD
9	2	0	5	1	6	Did not Vote
10	9	6	6	7	7	AfD
5	6	7	10	0	3	SPD
9	8	5	0	7	4	CDU/CSU

Figure 3 shows the correlation between the ideological variables for respondents in Germany. We see the highest absolute value between climate change and same-sex marriage attitudes, as respondents that want more actions against climate change, also support same-sex marriage more. On the other hand, there is no relationship between attitudes towards immigration and support for redistribution or same-sex marriage.