The European Government-Opposition Voter (EGOV) Data Set

Data on the government-opposition status of European voters and party identifiers

Abstract

The paper describes a new dataset, the European Government-Opposition Voters Data Set (EGOV), which categorizes European voters and party identifiers based on their individual party preferences, dividing them into pro-government and pro-opposition groups. The dataset includes two variables that can be used to supplement the integrated data sets of the European Social Survey project, which publishes one of the most comprehensive and most widely used social scientific database covering Europe. The present data enables the recoding of (any part of) an integrated dataset containing responses from more than 420 000 respondents in 33 European countries between 2002 and 2020, covering eight data waves and 215 country-years. The EGOV Data Set facilitates research that includes the aspect of respondents’ government-opposition status either as an independent or a control variable. Being a winner or a loser in a political sense strongly influences not only political opinions but also a wide set of perceptions from subjective well-being to economic performance. This way, these data could be especially helpful for research addressing polarization, institutional trust, economic perceptions and well-being.