Comparative National Elections Project

The Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP) is a collaborative research network and partnership among scholars who conduct and coordinate election studies across diverse political systems worldwide, using a common core questionnaire to achieve comparability. Started in the early 1990s by Paul Beck and Richard Gunther (Emeritus Professors of Political Science at Ohio State University), CNEP now includes 76 surveys from the 1990 to 2025 in 31 different countries and Hong Kong, spanning five continents with a focus on traditional voting behavior measures and the role of intermediaries. The project is currently coordinated by Principal Investigators Mariano Torcal (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and Robert Mattes (Strathclyde University) with Beck and Gunther as senior advisors.

Recent Changes in the CNEP

In its current phase, CNEP has sharpened its focus on four interconnected themes where the project holds distinctive comparative strengths: political polarization, populism, support for democracy and political intermediation through personal discussion networks, news media, associations and political parties. New questions reflecting this evolution are combined with essential items from earlier research foci retained in the common core questionnaire, creating time series that for some countries stretch back over four decades.

Research Design and Data Collection

The CNEP provides standardized survey instruments that enable comparative research while allowing flexibility for country-specific questions. Individual surveys are merged into a master file of all surveys to facilitate cross-national analyses of election studies from 1992 to the present. 

The project now offers two survey designs:

• Cross-sectional survey around election time
• Three-wave panel survey (where feasible)

Key innovations in the current phase include:

1. Transformation from cross-sectional to panel design with three waves (where possible), allowing researchers to track attitude change across the electoral cycle
2. Introduction of additional and new affective polarization measures to better capture contemporary political divisions
3. Expanded democratic attitudes battery with more comprehensive measures of democratic support
4. Addition of conjoint experiments in the post-election wave to better understand voter preferences and decision-making

For detailed information, please contact us at [email protected]

How to Join the CNEP and Data Releases

CNEP conducts regular calls for new election studies and is open to submissions at any time. Countries participating in these calls become part of the CNEP network, contributing their data to our comparative datasets. Data from participating studies are released every two years, ensuring a growing collection of high-quality comparative electoral data merged into a single file for multi-election analysis.

The CNEP welcomes data contributions from national election studies that follow our standardized methodology and questionnaire content and design.

For detailed submission guidelines, questionnaires, and required materials, please visit our Data Submission page or contact us at [email protected]

Institutional Support

The Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology (RECSM) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra hosts the CNEP website and is responsible for the entire harmonization and documentation processes. The University of Strathclyde provide additional institutional support for the project's coordination and development. We are also in partnership with the Mershon Center at the Ohio State University and the ICRS Latin America Center (LAC).