The Comparative Candidates Survey (CCS)

CCS Module I: 2005 - 2012 CCS Module II: 2013 - 2018

Module I: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Module II: Albania, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Montenegro, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The Comparative Candidates Survey (CCS) is a response to the growing number of candidate surveys in the Anglo-saxon world and beyond. More or less regular candidate surveys are conducted in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The rational of the CCS is to harmonise these dispersed efforts and give them a cross-nationally comparable core. The CCS is an internationally coordinated effort. It combines an internationally agreed and locally adapted core questionnaire with questions that try to capture national and election specifics. The core candidate questionnaire specifically focuses on the issue of individualisation of electoral campaigns, i.e. the empirical question to what extent the candidates run their own campaigns distinct from those of their parties. CCS has been running since 2005. Using the CCS Module I questionnaire, the first wave includes candidate surveys from 32 elections across 24 countries. To date, the second wave incorporates candidate surveys from 30 parliamentary elections in 21 countries, where the CCS Module II questionnaire was used. More information on the project can be found on the CCS website (www.comparativecandidates.org).

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