Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA) European Union Parliamentary Elections Archive (ICPSR 39588)

Version Date: Mar 11, 2026

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Principal Investigator(s):
Ken Kollman, University of Michigan. Center for Political Studies; Allen Hicken, University of Michigan. Center for Political Studies; Daniele Caramani, University of Zurich (Switzerland); David A. Backer, University of Maryland; David Lublin, American University

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39588.v1

Version V1

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Summary

Election results at the constituency level for European Union parliamentary elections.

Citation

Kollman, Ken, Hicken, Allen, Caramani, Daniele, Backer, David A., and Lublin, David. Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA) European Union Parliamentary Elections Archive. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2026-03-11. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39588.v1

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Funding

National Science Foundation, Taiwan Foundation for Democracy

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

Electoral District

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

1979-01-01 -- 2019-12-31

Date of Collection

1979-01-01 -- 2019-12-31

Data Collection Notes

  1. For additional information on the Constituency-Level Election Archive study, please visit the CLEA website.

  2. The European Economic Community (EEC), established in 1958, included six initial countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. As part of the EEC, the European Parliament (EP) seated representatives from the respective national parliaments. The first EP had 142 members, weighted by size of country. What was eventually called the European Community (EC) agreed in 1979 on a new system whereby Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were to be democratically elected. The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 stablished the European Union (EU) as we know it today, and the EP has continued to evolve, growing in size and reallocating seats to accommodate new member countries. The EU now has 27 member countries, and the EP has 707 MEPs and a president.

    Today, elections to the EP are held across the EU every five years. If a nation joins the EU mid-term (between EP elections), such as when Croatia joined in 2013, a special election is held to elect their parliamentary representatives. Countries have flexibility to choose their electoral methods, but they must be based on proportional representation (PR).

    A few countries in the initial election to the EP used methods similar to their own national parliaments. The U.K., for instance, after joining used single member districts for the first EP elections. Thereafter while it was a member, though, the U.K. used PR like the other countries.

    All countries except four elect representatives form a single national constituency. The four exceptions (Belgium, Ireland, Italy, and Poland) have subnational constituencies that use PR rules. The countries vary in their minimum thresholds for election - for instance, some countries require 5% for a party to be represented in the EP, while others require 4%, 3%, or 1.8%. Details on the electoral procedure can be found on the European Parliament website.

    The allocation of MEPs to each member country continues to be based on population. Regardless of population size, however, each is guaranteed at least 6 seats, and no country under the current treaties can have more than 96. The president holds approval authority over the EU budget and acts as the parliament's representative on the global stage.

    For more information about the EU, visit the European Union website.

  3. Country codes found in the data and documentation were developed by the United Nations
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Study Purpose

The purpose of the Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA) project is to produce a repository of detailed electoral results - i.e., votes received by each candidate/party, total votes cast, number of eligible voters - at the constituency level.

Time Method

Time Series

Universe

European Union parliamentary elections

Data Type(s)

Description of Variables

Amount of eligible voters in a constituency, political parties, and election year are some of the data collected in this study.

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Original Release Date

2026-03-11

Version History

2026-03-11 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Created variable labels and/or value labels.
  • Created online analysis version with question text.
  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

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Notes