Swedish Parliamentary Candidate Study
The Comparative Candidate Survey (CCS) is a joint international project aimed at better understanding the interactions between candidates, parties, and voters during election campaigns.
Voters in the Western world are increasingly making up their minds about which party to vote for at later stages and have simultaneously become more fluid in their choices. In light of this development, individual candidates have become more interesting to study. Research on candidates' activities, attitudes, and beliefs has therefore emerged as a separate field of research. In response, researchers from different countries have established a collaboration to compare what happens in different contexts.
The comparison is made by sending a joint questionnaire to parliamentary candidates in different countries after a national election has been held in each respective country. The core of the CCS questionnaire focuses on the election campaign, but other areas such as ideology, democracy, and representation are also included in the questions.
The CCS project was launched in 2006 and has so far been carried out in two different waves. The Swedish National Elections Studies Program has been actively participating in CCS since its inception. Modules I and II have been included in the context of two Swedish parliamentary elections, 2010 and 2014. The third module came in 2018 and was part of the Swedish election that year. Modules I and II have been used internationally in over 50 elections. The 2022 Swedish Parliamentary Candidate Study (Module III) will be conducted in 2023-2024.
Read more about CCS on the project website.