GERDA — German Election Database
Comprehensive election results for Germany at the municipality level — spanning federal, state, local, European, mayoral, and county elections. Plus subnational public opinion estimates for 43 policy issues.
Dataset Features
Federal Elections
Turnout and vote shares for all parties, with harmonized datasets mapped to 2021 and 2025 boundaries.
Usage notes →State Elections
State election results with three harmonization versions (2021, 2023, 2025 boundaries).
Usage notes →Municipal Elections
Local election results across all German municipalities with turnout and party vote shares.
Usage notes →European Elections New
European Parliament election results at the municipality level across four elections, harmonized to 2021 boundaries.
Usage notes →Mayoral Elections New
Election-level, candidate-level, and mayor panel data with individual tracking across terms.
Usage notes →Meinungsbild New
Subnational public opinion estimates across states, electoral districts, and counties based on ~118,000 survey responses.
Learn more →Harmonization
All datasets available in harmonized formats accounting for municipal boundary changes, using population-weighted crosswalks.
Usage notes →Authors
- Vincent Heddesheimer (vincent.heddesheimer@princeton.edu)
- Hanno Hilbig (hhilbig@ucdavis.edu)
- Florian Sichart (fsichart@princeton.edu)
- Andreas Wiedemann (awiedemann@princeton.edu)
Citation
Please cite the accompanying paper when using this dataset:
Heddesheimer, Vincent, Hanno Hilbig, Florian Sichart, & Andreas Wiedemann. 2025. GERDA: German Election Database. Nature: Scientific Data, 12: 618.
@article{Heddesheimer2025GERDA,
author = {Vincent Heddesheimer and Hanno Hilbig and Florian Sichart and Andreas Wiedemann},
doi = {10.1038/s41597-025-04811-5},
issn = {2052-4463},
issue = {1},
journal = {Scientific Data},
month = {4},
pages = {618},
title = {GERDA: The German Election Database},
volume = {12},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-04811-5},
year = {2025}
}
Contributing
The database is actively maintained and expanding. If you have suggestions, find data issues, or want to contribute, please open an issue on GitHub or email us directly.