Title: Elections in western Europe since 1815: electoral results by constituencies.
Series title:
The Societies of Europe ; historical data handbook series, edited by P. Flora, F. Kraus, F. Rothenbacher
Principal investigator(s):
Caramani, Daniele
Producer:
Mannheim, DE: University of Mannheim. Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES)
Date of creation:
Funding agency:
Collector:
Distributor:
London: McMillan References, 1999
Date of distribution: 2000-08-28
Access conditions/restrictions:
Data use for non-commercial purpose only
Copying allowed only for use on internal network of purchasing institution.
University of Toronto faculty, students, and staff, for academic research and
teaching purposes only.
Summary:
This CD-ROM contains the election results of 18 Western European countries from the nineteenth century until the present time (the last published election). The earliest election collected is the 1815 Norwegian election. Results have been collected at the level of the single constituencies. The information collected concerns the electorate, actual voters, and votes for single parties or candidates and is available in absolute figures and percentages (percentage distribution of votes by parties and percentage distribution of party votes by constituencies).
The collection of electoral results at the level of single constituencies for 18 Western European countries developed jointly with the comparative research on the formation processes of national electorates and party systems in Europe carried out in the framework of a Ph.D. dissertation written at the European University Institute of Florence (see Chapter 3 of the handbook in Part I 'Elections in Comparison').
Analysing the transformation of the territorial structures of European electorates required geographically disaggregated election results and a long-term historical perspective. Data that were machine-readable in already existing databases turned out to be fragmented, often limited to the most recent periods, poorly documented, and characterized by an low degree of comparability since data collectors only rarely referred to similar principles of data gathering.
The collection includes results of national legislative elections for the lower houses of parliament also in case of partial elections (for example, the renewal by half of the lower houses in Belgium and Luxemburg). The collection does not include the results of elections to regional, provincial, or communal bodies; referenda and other types of direct democracy vote; elections to senates, houses of regional representation or chambers of higher estates; or by-elections.
Political parties have been selected when they poll at least five per cent of the total nation-wide vote or at least five per cent of the vote within at least one constituency.
Keywords:
Geographic coverage:
international: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom (which includes Britain and Ireland for 1832-1918 and Britain and Northern Ireland since 1922)
Time period: 1815-[1999]
Periodicity: election dates
Date(s) of collection:
Universe:
Data type: aggregate statistics
Sample:
Unit of observation:
Mode of data collection: published sources
Citation:
Cd-rom supplement to "Elections in western Europe since 1815: electoral results by constituencies" (at University of Toronto Libraries: JN94 A91C27 2000 GOVT)
Extent of file: 104 data files (number of logical records varies) & accompanying documentation
Notes:
Data have been collected mainly from official sources. In many cases, especially for the earlier periods, only secondary sources were available. The list of sources contains both types of sources for each country.
Datafiles containing election results are available in Excel, SPSS, and SAS. They can be accessed by countries and periods by selecting the links appearing on the screen. Due to space reasons, some of the largest SAS files have been converted to zip-files which can be extracted with any unzip-program.
The documentation is subdivided into two types. First, institutional context information gives details on electoral laws, dates and types of elections, evolution of party systems, political parties (codes), levels of aggregation, constituencies (codes), and sources. Second, a file documentation informs on the technical specificities and concerns missing values (treatment and meaning), specific variables names and codes, indirect elections and two-ballot systems, computations (national totals and percentages), not applicable categories, etc.
Users of the CD-ROM can consult the MZES web page for accessing two types of information:
Related data:
Status: