Update Log

2026-08-18

Turnout corrected in four states, and Hessen 2013 and 2018 added at constituency level.

• State elections at municipality level: turnout was understated in Sachsen-Anhalt 1990–2016, Sachsen 1990/1994/1999, Niedersachsen 2008–2022 and Brandenburg 2009 and 2019; party shares shift slightly too. Brandenburg 1990, 1994 and 1999 remain affected.
• ltw_wkr_unharm now covers the Hessen Landtagswahlen of 2013 and 2018, both ballots, all 55 Wahlkreise.
• New flag_wkr_boundaries_recomputed: 1 where the figures sit on a later election’s Wahlkreiseinteilung. Hessen 2013 only, except Frankfurt am Main I and IV.
• Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern constituencies now carry names. wkr_name belongs to the election year, not the number, so join on (state, election_year, wkr_nr).

2026-08-10

Hessen mayors are now traceable across terms, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern reaches beyond the big cities.

• mayor_panel follows Hessen mayors from term to term across the whole 1993–2026 series. Most carry a person_id but no name, because the source redacts them.
• Mecklenburg-Vorpommern mayoral elections now include the amtsfreien Gemeinden of Landkreis Ludwigslust-Parchim, 2014–2023; five Landkreise are still outstanding. Parchim 2022 has no party for its candidates.
• New flag_decisive_round_missing in mayoral_candidates: is_winner is NA for every candidate and the election contributes no mayor to mayor_panel. No rows currently carry it.

2026-08-04

Corrected winners and turnout across the mayoral, Landrat and county datasets, plus new coverage.

• Winners changed in 104 Hessen runoff cycles and 8 Niedersachsen mayoral elections. Sachsen county valid_votes had held the invalid-ballot count, and Niedersachsen county turnout rises (2016: 54.9 % → 55.6 %).
• New county elections: Sachsen 1994 and 1995, Thüringen 1994 and 1999, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 1994–2011, Nordrhein-Westfalen 2025 — the first and last Kreis-level only. Niedersachsen Gemeinderatswahlen now start in 1981.
• Brandenburg mayoral elections now start in 2010, hauptamtliche Bürgermeister and Oberbürgermeister only; 2010–2013 is incomplete and rows sit on today’s municipal boundaries. Also new: Niedersachsen runoffs 2014/2016/2019 (no vote counts for 2019) and the 2017 elections, Schleswig-Holstein 2026, Sachsen-Anhalt Landrat through 2026.
• New flag_partial_coverage in the harmonised county files: counts describe only part of the 2021 unit, while turnout and vote shares stay valid.

2026-07-28

County elections: Rheinland-Pfalz added, Brandenburg restored.

• Rheinland-Pfalz Kreistagswahlen 1964–2019 are new, and Gemeinderatswahlen now start in 1969 rather than 1994, with council seats back to 1984. valid_votes counts ballots, and Gemeinden electing by Mehrheitswahl carry other = 1 instead of party shares. The 2024 Kommunalwahl is not yet included.
• Brandenburg county elections 2003–2024, previously missing entirely, are now included, with pooled postal votes allocated to municipalities.

2026-07-27

Bayern councils 2026 · Hessen mayoral history · gerda 0.8.

• Bayern Gemeinde- and Stadtratswahlen 2026, all 2,056 Gemeinden, with council seats. For 2026 valid_votes counts ballots rather than cumulative votes; shares are unaffected.
• Hessen mayoral and Landrat elections now cover 1993–2026. The office redacts candidate names; they appear only where our other sources supply them.
• gerda 0.8: share_50to59_census22 and share_60plus_census22 renamed to match their actual bins (old names now error), deprecated federal_cty_unharm aliases removed. No dataset values changed.

2026-07-23

Council seats (Sitze) added. seats_* columns in municipal_unharm wherever states report them (NA means no source; major parties only, so seats do not sum to council size), and a new county_council_seats dataset covering 400 counties, 2008–2025. Also new: Bayern Kommunalwahl 2026 in county_elec_unharm.

2026-07-21

Mayoral elections expanded from 7 to 13 states, adding Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Thüringen, Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt and Hessen; Landrat elections now cover 11 states.

• New flag_superseded marks Bayern rounds that did not seat a mayor — filter == FALSE for decisive rounds only.
• Baden-Württemberg records no candidate party; Thüringen and Sachsen-Anhalt restrict candidate names.

2026-07-15

Wahlkreis-level election data, plus gerda 0.7.x. New datasets: Bundestag results for all 299 Wahlkreise (2002–2025, first and second votes, Direktmandat winners) and Landtag elections at Wahlkreis level (1990–2026, all 16 states). The R package gains download retries and on-disk caching (cache = TRUE).

2026-06-27

Baden-Württemberg state & county elections, and Hessen 2026 council elections.

• BW Landtagswahl 2026 (the first under the new two-vote system — GERDA records the Zweitstimme) and BW Kreistagswahl 2024 (the source reports no turnout fields).
• BW Kreistag 2004–2019: waehlervereinigungen is now filled, so party shares sum to ~1.0. Named-party shares are unchanged.
• Hessen councils 2026, municipal and county, with BSW as its own column. Hessen council votes are cumulative, so valid_votes counts votes rather than ballots.

2026-05-06

Mayoral elections: election-type classification refined for NRW, Bayern and Saarland; 2025 NRW Stichwahl results added.

New: Landrat elections — landrat_unharm, landrat_candidates. Directly elected heads of Landkreise, 1945–2026, 9 states, split out of the mayoral datasets.

2026-04-19

State elections: state_unharm, state_harm

• Fixed turnout above 100% caused by unallocated Briefwahl votes in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (1994–2011) and Schleswig-Holstein (2017/2022).
• eligible_voters for Bayern 1994–2013 is now NA rather than 0 (the source has no turnout data for those years).
• Added turnout safety flags (flag_harm_turnout_above_1) in harmonized data.

2026-04-19

Python package: initial release of gerda on PyPI, a lightweight loader for GERDA datasets. Mirrors load_gerda_web, gerda_data_list and party_crosswalk from the R package; covariate and Census merge helpers are not yet ported.

2026-04-10

State elections: Hamburg 2020 now uses Landesstimmen instead of Wahlkreislistenstimmen, consistent with all other Hamburg elections.