Democratic Electoral Systems, 1919-2020 dataset (Version 5.0)

Data source: Nils-Christian Bormann and Matt Golder

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The Democratic Electoral Systems (DES) dataset covers all of the legislative and presidential elections that have taken place in democratic states from 1919 through 2020. It also continues to include information on all elections that are considered democratic by at least one of five different measures of regime type: Democracy and Dictatorship (DD), Freedom House (FH), Polity5, Boix-Miller-Rosato (BMR), and Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The DES dataset provides information on electoral rules and party system size for 1,578 lower-house parliamentary and 602 first-round presidential elections in democracies. DES 5.0 covers all legislative and presidential elections that have taken place in democratic states from January 1, 1919, through December 31, 2020.

Note: The original values of -99 (the information is missing but should theoretically be available) and -88 (there is no single value for this particular variable) have been recoded to ''.'' (missing). In cases of multiple elections per year, we keep the data of the latest election.

Dataset type
Time-Series
Dataset level
Country
Last updated by source
2022-12-21

Citation

When using this dataset, please cite as:

• Bormann, N.-C., & Golder, M. (2022). Democratic electoral systems around the world, 1946–2020. Electoral Studies, 78, 102487. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2022.102487
• Cheibub, J. A., Gandhi, J., & Vreeland, J. R. (2010). Democracy and dictatorship revisited. Public Choice, 143(1-2), 67–101.

Variables in this dataset

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Average District Magnitude
QoG code: gol_adm

Average district magnitude in an electoral tier. This is calculated as the total number of seats allocated in an electoral tier divided by the total number of districts in that tier.

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Districts
QoG code: gol_dist

This is the number of electoral districts or constituencies in an electoral tier.

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Effective Number of Electoral Parties
QoG code: gol_enep

Effective number of electoral parties.

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Effective Number of Electoral Parties 1
QoG code: gol_enep1

The effective number of electoral parties once the ''other'' category has been ''corrected'' by using the least component method of bounds.

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Effective Number of Electoral Parties (Others)
QoG code: gol_enepo

The percentage of the vote going to parties that are collectively known as ''others'' in official election results.

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Effective Number of Parliamentary or Legislative Parties
QoG code: gol_enpp

The effective number of parliamentary (legislative) parties.

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Effective Number of Parliamentary or Legislative Parties, other corrected
QoG code: gol_enpp1

This is the effective number of parliamentary (legislative) parties once the ''other'' category has been ''corrected'' by using the least component method of bounds.

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Effective Number of Parliamentary or Legislative Parties (Others)
QoG code: gol_enppo

The percentage of seats won by parties that are collectively known as ''others'' in official election results.

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Effective Number of Presidential Candidates
QoG code: gol_enpres

The effective number of presidential candidates.

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Electoral System Type-3 classes
QoG code: gol_est

This is a categorical variable that takes on one of three values indicating the basic type of electoral system used in the elections. 1. Majoritarian 2. Proportional 3. Mixed

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Electoral System Type-12 classes
QoG code: gol_est_spec

This is a categorical variable that provides a more detailed indication of the type of electoral system used in the election. 1. Single-Member-District-Plurality (SMDP) 2. Two-Round System (TRS ...

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Institution
QoG code: gol_inst

This is a categorical variable indicating a country's regime type at the end of a given year. The data for this variable come from Cheibub, Gandhi and Vreeland (2010), which we updated through 2011. ...

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Mixed Type
QoG code: gol_mix

This is a categorical variable that indicates the precise type of mixed electoral system that is being used. 1. Coexistence 2. Superposition 3. Fusion 4. Correction 5. Conditional

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Multi-Tier Type
QoG code: gol_mt

This is a dichotomous variable that indicates whether different electoral tiers are linked (1) or not (0). Electoral tiers are linked if the unused votes from one electoral tier are used to allocate s ...

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Number of Seats
QoG code: gol_nos

This indicates the total number of seats in the lower house of the national legislature.

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Presidential Electoral System Type
QoG code: gol_pest

This is a categorical variable that indicates the electoral formula used in the presidential election. 1. Plurality 2. Absolute Majority 3. Qualified Majority 4. Electoral College 5. Alternativ ...

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Electoral Formula used in an Electoral Tier
QoG code: gol_pr

This is a categorical variable that indicates the precise electoral formula used in an electoral tier. 1. Single-Member-District-Plurality (SMDP) 2. Two Round Majority-Plurality 3. Two Round ...

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Presidential Election
QoG code: gol_preel

This is a dichotomous variable that takes on the value 1 if the election is presidential and 0 if the election is legislative.

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Upper Seats
QoG code: gol_upseat

This indicates the number of legislative seats allocated in electoral districts above the lowest electoral tier.

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Upper Tier
QoG code: gol_uptier

This indicates the percentage of all legislative seats allocated in electoral districts above the lowest electoral tier.

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