Representative election statistics

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ballot with a distinctive feature in the 2014 European elections

The representative election statistics provide information about the voting behavior of different population groups. In contrast to voter surveys , it is not based on the information provided by the respondents, but, like general election statistics, evaluates the voting slips actually cast . For the representative election statistics, the ballot papers are provided with information about the respective voter while maintaining voting secrecy .

Legal framework and methodology

The official general election statistics only allow geographical and result-related statements, the secret election prevents an evaluation of demographic characteristics. Since political research also wants information on voter turnout and voting behavior of individual groups, the Election Statistics Act allows the use of marked ballot papers in representative electoral districts . They show the gender as well as belonging to one of five age groups. The electoral districts used for the survey are selected as a stratified sample so that the entire electorate can be represented representatively . The Electoral Statistics Act limits the number of survey districts to a maximum of five percent of all electoral districts. This upper limit is not used in practice: In the 2009 Bundestag elections , the sample contained around 2,900 of 90,000 electoral districts with a total of around 2.2 million eligible voters. Electoral districts with fewer than 400 eligible voters are generally excluded in order not to allow any conclusions to be drawn about individual voting behavior. In addition, the electoral characteristics are not collected by the electoral officers during the local vote count, but centrally by the statistical authorities. The law allows up to ten age groups to collect voter participation and, since 2013, up to six age groups to collect votes by party. The following age groups are used for voting according to parties: 18 to 24 years, 25 to 34 years, 35 to 44 years, 45 to 59 years, 60 to 69 years and 70 years and older. In the federal elections up to and including 2009, voters aged 60 and over were grouped together. Likewise, to protect voting secrecy, the statistical evaluations are not shown for the individual electoral districts, but only at the federal and state level.

The Election Statistics Act only applies to Bundestag and European elections. For state elections, representative election statistics are regulated by state law, for example in Bavaria by Article 91 of the State Election Act and Article 87 of the State Electoral Code, in North Rhine-Westphalia by Section 45 LWG and Section 64 LWO or in Lower Saxony by Section 52 LWG.

history

The first evaluations, which correspond to the objective of today's representative election statistics, were already made during the Saxon state elections in 1903, but here only related to voter turnout. In the Weimar Republic from 1924 onwards, voting in some areas was based on gender. The system used today was first introduced in the 1953 Bundestag election . The survey was suspended for the 1994 and 1998 Bundestag elections (but not the European elections) because the Bundestag had concerns about its acceptance among the population. Following demands from academia and resolutions by the Bundesrat, the Bundestag passed a separate election statistics law in 1999, which was intended to counter possible resistance from voters and standardized numerous protective measures. From 2002 onwards, the survey was expanded to include postal voting districts, after the previously insignificant proportion of postal voters had already reached 16 percent in 1998.

Practical implementation

The voter participation of the individual groups can already be recorded on the basis of the electoral roll; the information on the ballot papers is not required for this. Because of the lower sensitivity of the data, an evaluation according to ten age groups is permissible. The actual voting behavior, on the other hand, is recorded using personal characteristics that are pre-printed on each voting slip. Therefore, there must be a sufficient number of ballot papers for each of the ten age / gender combinations in each polling station. During the preparations, therefore, the age and gender distribution in the community concerned is determined and, as a precaution, a hundred percent turnout is assumed. In a constituency with 1,000 eligible voters and an average population structure, 50, 70, 80, 140 and 150 ballot papers would be provided for male voters of the individual age groups, and 50, 60, 80, 130 and 190 ballot papers for female voters. If the year of birth is not included in the printout of the electoral roll and the voter is not willing to provide his year of birth, he will receive the voting slip based on the best possible estimate. There is no optional entitlement to the use of an unmarked ballot slip and could not be fulfilled at the polling station because there are usually no other ballot papers in the respective electoral district. In the opinion of the Berlin State Returning Officer, however, the validity of a ballot slip is not affected if the distinguishing mark has been removed by tearing off the person entitled to vote.

After the election deadline, the votes are initially counted in the regular way, the ballot papers are then sealed and sent to the responsible state authority (or in municipalities with their own statistics office) for statistical analysis. After the evaluation, they are to be returned to the municipalities. Paragraph 1 of the Election Statistics Act expressly stipulates that the evaluation result must be published. Typically, however, this is only possible around six months after the election date.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Federal Returning Officer : Election to the 18th German Bundestag: Volume 5, Part 2 (Representative election statistics and electoral district statistics) (PDF; 1391 kB), published February 2015, pp. 8-11.
  2. ↑ Draft law: Act to suspend the provisions on representative election statistics of September 28, 1994 (PDF; 223 kB)
  3. ↑ Draft law: Law to repeal the regulations on representative election statistics of August 25, 1998 (PDF; 234 kB)
  4. ↑ Karina Schorn: The representative election statistics - still a little-known statistic ( memento of the original from July 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.8 MB), in: KommunalPraxis Spezial 3/2009, p. 122 ff. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundeswahlleiter.de
  5. ↑ State Returning Officer Berlin: "Examples of the decision on the validity or invalidity of the votes cast in the elections to the Berlin House of Representatives on September 18, 2016" from July 2016, p. 22, accessed on July 7, 2016