GermanParties2009 {psychotools}

Choice among German Political Parties

Description

Preferences of 192 respondents choosing among five German political parties and abstention from voting.

Usage

data("GermanParties2009")

Format

A data frame containing 192 observations on 6 variables.

preference

Paired comparison of class paircomp. All 15 pairwise choices among five German parties and abstention from voting.

ordered.pref

Ordered paired comparison of class paircomp. Same as preference, but within-pair order is recognized.

gender

Factor coding gender.

age

Integer. Age of the respondents in years.

education

Ordered factor. Level of education: 1 no degree, 2 Hauptschule (Secondary General School), 3 Realschule (Intermediate Secondary School), 4 Gymnasium (High School), 5 Studium (University)

crisis

Factor. Do you feel affected by the economic crisis?

interviewer

Factor. Interviewer id.

Details

A survey was conducted at the Department of Psychology, Universität Tübingen, in June 2009, three months before the German election. The sample was stratified by gender and age (younger versus older than 30 years) with 48 participants in each group.

The parties to be compared were Die Linke (socialists), Die Grünen (ecologists), SPD (social democrats), CDU/CSU (conservatives), and FDP (liberals). In addition, there was the option of abstaining from voting (coded as none).

Participants were presented with 15 pairs of options in random order. On each trial, their task was to choose the party they would rather vote for at an election for the German parliament. A given participant compared each pair in one order only, hence the NA's in ordered.pref.

In order to minimize response biases, the pairs of options were read to the participants one at a time. Participants made their choices by crossing either “First Option” or “Second Option” on an anonymous response sheet.

The interviewers were Psychology Master's students who collected the data for course credits. Since they mainly interviewed people they knew, the results are not representative of the political opinions in Germany. As far as the winner of the survey (Die Grünen) is concerned, however, the results agree with the outcome of the election for the Tübingen voters.

The results of the election on September 27, 2009 (number of so-called Zweitstimmen in percent) were:

	Germany	Tübingen
Die Linke	11.9	8.5
Die Grünen	10.7	27.9
SPD	23.0	21.1
CDU/CSU	33.8	23.0
FDP	14.6	13.9
Others	6.0	5.7

The voter turnout was 70.8 percent in Germany and 80.5 percent in Tübingen.

See Also

paircomp

Examples

data("GermanParties2009", package = "psychotools")
summary(GermanParties2009$preference)