European Election Study 2014 EES 2014 Voter Study First Post-Electoral Study Release Notes Sebastian Adrian Popa Hermann Schmitt Sara B Hobolt Eftichia Teperoglou Original release 1 January 2015 MZES, University of Mannheim Acknowledgement of the data Users of the data are kindly asked to acknowledge use of the data by always citing both the data and the accompanying release document. How to cite this data: Schmitt, Hermann; Popa, Sebastian A.; Hobolt, Sara B.; Teperoglou, Eftichia (2015): European Parliament Election Study 2014, Voter Study. GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA5160 Data file Version 2.0.0, doi:10.4232/1. 12300 and Schmitt H, Hobolt SB and Popa SA (2015) Does personalization increase turnout? Spitzenkandidaten in the 2014 European Parliament elections. European Union Politics, Online first available for download from: http://eup.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/06/03/1465116515584626.full How to cite this document: Sebastian Adrian Popa, Hermann Schmitt, Sara B. Hobolt, and Eftichia Teperoglou (2015) EES 2014 Voter Study Advance Release Notes. Mannheim: MZES, University of Mannheim. Acknowledgement of assistance The 2014 EES voter study was funded by a consortium of private foundations under the leadership of Volkswagen Foundation (the other partners are: Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Stiftung Mercator, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian). It profited enormously from to synergies that emerged from the co-operation with the post-election survey funded by the European Parliament. Last but certainly not least, it benefited from the generous support of TNS Opinion who did the fieldwork in all the 28 member countries . The study would not have been possible the help of many colleagues, both members of the EES team and country experts form the wider academic community, who spent valuable time on the questionnaire and study preparation, often at very short notice. We would like to acknowledge their work here and thank them warmly, for without their assistance the EES 2014 would certainly be of lesser quality. Susan Banducci Wouter van der Brug Claes de Vreese Catherine de Vries Cees van der Eijk Mark N. Franklin Heiko Giebler Olga Gyarfasova Sylvia Kritzinger Pedro Magalhães Markus Quandt Paolo Segatti Jacques Thomassen Bernhard Weßels Version history The second release of the data bring the following corrections 1. The items of qpp19 battery were added for France and Wallonia. Unfortunately, due to an error in development of the English language master questionnaire the items will not be made available for the other countries. To be more specific the original question wording was changed from :“And about where would you place the following parties on this scale? How about the (Party X)? Which number from 0 to 10, where 0 means “[European integration has] already gone too far” and 10 means “[European integration] should be pushed further” best describes [Party X]?” to “And about where would you place the following political parties on this scale from 0 to 10, where '0' means the political party "has already gone too far “[with European integration]" and '10' means it "should be pushed further"?” What number on this scale best describes [Party X]?”. Adding “political party” to the original question wording altered the meaning of the question making it impossible to accurately capture the perception of the respondents regarding the placement of the parties on the pro-anti EU axis of political competition. As a partial remedy for this issue both the original and the modified question wording were added to a new survey fielded in March 2015. The data yielded by the EES 2014 Voter Study, Second Post-Electoral Study is available for download from the following link: http://dx.doi.org/10.4232/1.5161. 2. The “objective” positions of parties on the left-right axis, computed as the mean perceived party positions based on all valid placements of respondents (i.e. item qpp14_px from EES 2014 Voter Study, First Post-Electoral Study) was added to the database, see items qpp14_mean_px 3. The “objective” positions of parties on the pro-anti EU axis computed as the mean perceived party positions based on all valid placements of respondents (i.e. item qpp19_px from EES 2014 Voter Study, Second Post-Electoral Study), was added to the database, see items qpp19_mean_px 4. The code of the cdH (Centre Democrate Humaniste) Humanist Democratic Centre was corrected in qp2_emcs, qp2_ees, qp5_ees, qp6_ees and qp21_ees. The correct code for qp2_emcs is 21522 (previous code was 21910). The correct code for qp2_ees, qp5_ees, qp6_ees qp21_ees 1056522 (previous code was 1056222) Structure of the data file Variable names The data file consists of four sets of variables distinguished by the characters qp, qpp, d, p and w. The p variable describe the interview protocol: e.g. date of the interview, time of the beginning of the interview, number of minutes the interview lasted, number of persons present during the interview, respondent cooperation, language on interview, region where interview took place, size of locality. The variable order and –numbering reflect that of the 2014 questionnaire. qp and qpp variables comprise the interview questions, with the important distinction that the qp question were commissioned by the European Parliament and the qpp questions were commissioned by the EES team . Both variable order and –numbering reflect that of the 2014 questionnaire. d variables represent the socio-demographic variables provide by TNS-opinion. The variable order and –numbering reflect that of the 2014 questionnaire. w variables are additional variables, based either on additional information from the fieldwork agency, or derived on the basis of questionnaire variables. The weighting variables with a name ending in “pol” are based on both standard and political weighting factors: gender x age, urbanization, region (Nuts), turnout European Elections and results European Elections by party. The weighting variables without a name ending in “pol” are based on the standard weighting factors: gender x age, urbanization and region (Nuts). (see Appendix 4 for a complete description of the weighting variables). Missing Values All qp, qpp and d variables follow an identical missing values labeling scheme. -9: Don't Know [DK] -8: Refused [REF] -7: System missing For the qpp8 and qpp14 batteries the we added: -99: Do not know the party In addition, a number of variables (e.g., vote choice) have additional missing value labels within this range. Where relevant, consistent labeling has been implemented. Please note that no missing values have been defined in the data file, so it is up to the researcher to decide how to deal with various causes of missing data. Where possible, the original question codes have been maintained as subfixes. Missing values are not country specific. The original vote choice question are: qp2 (vote choice in the 2014 EP elections), qpp5 (vote choice in previous national elections) and qpp 6(vote intention), while the original party ID question is qpp21. Based on these variables we computed a new set of variables (qp2_ees, qpp5_ees, qpp6_ees and qpp21_ees) assigning unique values that correspond to the European Parliament Election Study 2009, Voter Study, in case the parties were not included in the 2009 study we assigned a new code. Additionally qp2_emcs was computed to reflect the coding system used by the Euromanifesto Project. A special case form the questions regarding the original placement of parties along the left-right continuum (qpp14_), and the probability to vote questions (qpp8_). For these variables, not the answer options, but the actual questions vary by country. For these three sets of questions, the specific party probed is described in these release notes (see below). We note that the order of these party-questions is identical for all three questions (i.e., qpp8_1 probes the same party as qpp14_1, for each country) and is identical to the order used in the original country questionnaires. A list, containing party probed (per variable), as well as the corresponding party codes (used in the vote choice and party ID questions), is provided for the user’s convenience (see below, Appendix 1: EES 2014 party codes and variables). Questions qppp1 and qppp2 although present in the master questionnaire were not fielded. We encourage users of the data to contact us should they spot any errors or anomalies in the data via email at [email protected] (Sebastian Popa). Variable Specific notes The following is a description of those variables where additional information may be required. qp10_x: Media outlets watched (prompted) Each variable (qp10_1 to qp10_3) prompts for the following outlet Country QP10 Newspapers Austria QP10 1 Der Standard 2 Die Presse 3 Neue Kronen Zeitung Belgium-Flanders QP10 1 De Morgen 2 De Standard 3 Het Laatste Nieuws Belgium-Wallonia QP10 1 La Derniere Heure 2 La Libre Belgique 3 Le Soir Bulgaria QP10 1 24 часа 2 Дневник 3 Труд Croatia QP10 1 Jutarnji List 2 24sata 3 Večernji list Cyprus QP10 1 Χαραυγή 2 Φιλελεύθερος 3 Σημερινή Czech Republic QP10 1 Blesk 2 Mladá Fronta 3 Právo Denmark QP10 1 Ekstra Bladet 2 Morgenavisen Jyllandsposten 3 Politiken Estonia QP10 1 Eesti Ekspress 2 Postimees 3 SL Öhtuleht Finland QP10 1 Aamulehti 2 Helsingin Sanomat 3 Ilta-Sanomat France QP10 1 Le Figaro 2 Le Monde 3 Libération Germany QP10 1 Bild 2 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) 3 Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) Greece QP10 1 Εφημερίδα των Συντακτών 2 Καθημερινή 3 Τα Νέα Hungary QP10 1 Blikk 2 Magyar Nemzet 3 Népszabadság