Finding data

The European Election and Referendum Database is intended to provide election results on a regional level for European countries. The archive cover the period from 1990 until present and publishes results from parliamentary elections, European Parliament elections, presidential elections, as well as EU-related referendums for a total of 31 European countries.

Data are collected from national election authorities, national statistical agencies and other official sources and include data on number of persons entitled to vote (electorate), numbers of votes cast for each contesting party or candidate, number of valid votes as well as number of invalid votes.

In order to promote comparability the archive publishes regional election results according to the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS), level 1 to 3. The NUTS hierarchy provides a single uniform breakdown of territorial units for the production of regional statistics for the European Union. The basic principles for NUTS can be found here. The majority of datasets in the archive are presented on NUTS levels 1-3, and on country level.

The Scottish Politics Research Unit has been covering politics and elections in Scotland since 1996. This site contains detailed results for all Scottish Westminster elections since 1983, Scottish parliamentary elections since 1999 and European elections since 1979, along with information on by-elections, local government elections,  opinion polls, referendum results, and election maps.

Nesstar is the online data exploration system used to provide access to a wide variety of datasets held by ESDS including many large-scale datasets, for example, the Labour Force Survey, and academic surveys such as the British Social Attitudes Survey and the National Child Development Study . All visitors to the ESDS Nesstar Catalogue can browse study metadata, variable frequencies and use the simple and advanced search options. Registered users can also create simple online cross-tabulations, produce graphs, and download subsets of variables in a variety of formats.

The Electoral Commission is an independent body set up by the UK Parliament whose aim is "integrity and public confidence in the democratic process." Links include: results and analysis; reports on previous elections; upcoming elections and referendums; election spending, party finance, performance standards. There's also a link to publications and research containing election reports, fact sheets and case studies, and policy and research resources.

Part of the Access Research Knowledge (ARK) Northern ireland (a resource providing access to social and political material on Northern Ireland). Northern Ireland Elections links to information about elections in Northern Ireland since 1895. Also contains a summary of the most recent general, district council and European election results.

British Election Study, 2001:
The BES for the 2001 general election (the name was changed again) comprised three main components and two supplementary ones. The first main component comprised a pre- and post-election cross-section survey, and a panel survey. The second consisted of a free-standing 4,500-person 'rolling' election campaign survey, conducted during the general election campaign and the third component comprised a separate election survey conducted in Northern Ireland.

British Election Study, 2005:
principal objectives of the 2005 BES were to study long-term trends in British voting behaviour; explain the election outcome, party choice and turnout; and examine the consequences of elections for the operation of democracy more generally.

Standard Eurobarometer public opinion surveys are carried out on behalf of the European Commission at least 2 times a year in all member nations of the European Union and can be regarded as a unique programme of cross-national and cross-temporal comparative social research. Since the early 1970's representative national samples in all European Union (European Community) member countries are simultaneously interviewed in each spring and each autumn.

The Eurobarometer survey series monitors attitudes toward the European Union amongst member states, as well as other social topics. This site hosted by GESIS  provides codebook searches and other information. UK academic users should order datasets through the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS), which hosts the catalogue of the Data Archive.
Note: certain studies are covered by Embargo Provisions.

This site includes links to sites around the world which provide complete and detailed national and local election statistics as well as links to other election resources.