Election Forecasts for the German Federal Election 2025
Research question/goal:
In this research project, we devise a forecasting endeavour for the 2025 German Federal Election, which provides three main contributions. First, it advances the dynamic scientific forecasting of elections in multiparty systems by developing and applying new methods that account for uncertainty over time and efficiently pool information from various sources and levels. Second, it collects primary and secondary polling data, which will inform local and national level forecasts as well as research on the consequences of election forecasting exposure. These data will be made available to the scientific community for further analyses. Third, it will provide observational and experimental evidence on the consequences of election forecasts on the attitudes and behaviours of citizens and elites.
External Directors: Lukas F. Stoetzer (University of Witten/Herdecke) and Simon Munzert (Hertie School Berlin)
Current stage:
In 2023, we submitted a grant proposal for the project to the German Research Foundation (DFG), which was approved at the end of the year. The next step will be to prepare the data collection. We plan to conduct a pretest during the Saxon state election in September 2024. In addition, we have continued to review the literature on election forecasting. We have also attended workshops on science communication because disseminating our forecasts to the wider public and the scientific community is an important goal of our project.
Fact sheet
Funding:
DFG
Duration:
2023 to 2024
Status:
ongoing
Data Sources:
Survey data (incl. survey experiments), polls, official statistics
