Data Files

Every table below is available as Excel (.xlsx), CSV, and RDS. Harmonized files map results onto consistent boundaries so that elections can be compared over time.

Before comparing files: federal county/municipality party shares use number_voters; federal constituency, state and European party shares use valid_votes. Imputed denominator weights, multi-vote units, missing fields and the two federal 2021 result versions are explained in the usage notes. Empty CSV/Excel cells represent missing values, not zeros.

Local Elections

The unharmonized file also carries council seats (seats_* columns) for the states and years where the source reports them; see the usage notes. The harmonized files omit seats, because a population-weighted sum of seats across merged municipalities is not a real council.

State Elections

Historical coverage varies: Baden-Württemberg includes the 1952 constituent-assembly election on 1979 municipal boundaries, with electorate and turnout unavailable. Municipality data for Thüringen start in 1994 and Niedersachsen in 1974; NRW before 1975 is county-level. SH 1983 covers in-person votes only, with overall turnout unavailable; consult the state usage notes and coverage, completeness and column schema before aggregating.

Federal Elections

Related external datasets extending federal coverage beyond GERDA:

• German Post-War Election Database (GPWED): municipality-level results, 1949–1969 (paper)
• ZEIT Online Wahlkreis data: electoral-district (Wahlkreis) results recalculated to 2025 boundaries, 1949–2021

European Elections

Mayoral Elections

Coverage: 13 states (Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, Brandenburg, Hessen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thüringen). Municipal mayors only; Landrat elections are the separate dataset below. Candidate data include predicted gender and name-based migration background.

Hessen candidate names for 1993–2012 come from Hessami, Zohal (2018), “Accountability and Incentives of Appointed and Elected Public Officials”, Review of Economics and Statistics 100(1): 51–64, replication data doi:10.7910/DVN/FZWOMK. Please cite it alongside GERDA when you use them. Only the elected person is named for those years; losing candidates are not.

Landrat Elections

Direct elections of the heads of Landkreise (rural counties) and equivalent regions (Städteregion Aachen, Regionalverband Saarbrücken). Same schema as the mayoral dataset, on county-level units (8-digit AGS ending in 000).

Coverage by state: Bayern (1945–2026, 71 Kreise), Hessen (1993–2024, 21 Kreise), Rheinland-Pfalz (1995–2025), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (2000–2025), Sachsen (2002–2025), Niedersachsen (2006–2021), Thüringen (2006–2026), Sachsen-Anhalt (2007–2026), NRW (2009–2025, 31 Kreise + Städteregion Aachen), Saarland (2011–2024, Regionalverband Saarbrücken + 5 Landkreise), Brandenburg (2010–2026). 2,166 election rounds / 5,348 candidate rows across 11 states. Baden-Württemberg and Schleswig-Holstein are not included because their Landräte are elected by the Kreistag rather than by popular vote.

County Elections (Kreistagswahlen)

county_council_seats is a yearly panel of county-council composition (400 counties × 2008–2025), not an election table: each council’s seat distribution is carried forward until the next election changes it. Party seat columns sum to seats_total, with seats_other as the residual. Municipal council seats are inside municipal_unharm as seats_* columns (see Local Elections).

Additional Files