This change log records the most recent changes to the main datasets.
October 8, 2026
Updates
New dataset
A new dataset covering all lower-house elections has been released. At present, only parties and electoral alliances that won at least one seat are included, but future updates will extend the coverage to all parties and electoral alliances that received at least 1 percent of the vote.
Party codebook
The party codebook has been expanded to cover the newly released election dataset, using consistent party IDs across all datasets.
Israel
ches_id values for the 2021 and 2022 elections have been matched to the 2021/2022 Chapel Hill Expert Survey: Israel (Zur and Bakker 2023). All CHES-derived variables have been calculated for the affected cabinets in the Basic, Party, and Potential Governments datasets.
Lithuania
date_out, the associated duration variables, and the term_* variables have been coded for cabinet 24021.
The Sinkevicius cabinet (cab_id 24022) has been coded.
Sweden
date_out, the associated duration variables, and the term_* variables have been coded for cabinet 16034.
United Kingdom
The Burnham cabinet (cab_id 17033) has been coded.
Fixed errors
General
Due to a coding error, the cab_gravity variables were calculated using simple mean positions rather than weighted mean positions. The error has been fixed, and all affected variables have been recalculated for all cabinets.
In previous releases, a small number of cabinets had incorrect values for cabinet-status variables (e.g., cab_majority, cab_mwc, and govtype). All cabinet-status variables have been recalculated for all cabinets to ensure consistent coding.
Bulgaria
country_elec_id was incorrect for all elections after 1808. The error was caused by an incorrect election date for cabinet 18015. All affected entries have been corrected.
elecdate was incorrect for cab_id 18018 and has been corrected to 2017-03-26.
date_out was incorrect for cab_id 18014 and has been corrected to 2014-07-24.
Canada
The country_elec_num and country_elec_id values were incorrect for cab_id 33022. Both values have been corrected.
Estonia
date_out was incorrect for cabinet 21018, while date_in was incorrect for cabinet 21019. The dates have been corrected to 2022-07-14 and 2022-07-18, respectively. All duration variables have been recalculated.
Israel
The party_id for party Y was incorrect for cabinets 36064 and 36065. It has been changed to the correct code, 340058. The corresponding partyfacts_id and manifesto_id values have also been corrected, as have the values of rile, rile_logit, prosser_lrgen, and prosser_lrgen_logit.
The party codebook contained incorrect information about party JL (party_id 340100). This information has been corrected.
Latvia
date_out has been corrected for cabinet 23021. All duration-related variables have been recalculated.
Slovenia
Party SD (party ID 290004) had an incorrect number of seats in cabinet 29017. This has been corrected.
Spain
The caretaker government between the April and November 2019 elections was previously not coded, even though it should have been included under REPDEM’s coding rules because both the preceding cabinet was terminated by an election, and the caretaker cabinet was terminated by an election with no intermediate cabinets. The caretaker government has now been coded (cab_id 15016).
date_out for the preceding cabinet (cab_id 15015) has been changed to the date of the April 2019 election, and all duration-related variables have been recalculated. All subsequent Spanish cabinet and election IDs have also been incremented by one. For example, the previous cab_id 15016 is now 15017, and the previous country_elec_id 1514 is now 1515. Because the cab_id values changed, the corresponding unique_id values have also been updated.
July 1, 2026
All REPDEM basic datasets
New governments formed between Janury 1 and 31 June 2026 have been coded (9 cabinets). Government terminations occurring in the same period have also been coded (9 cabinets).
April 28, 2026
All REPDEM yearly datasets
The yearly (periodized) datasets previously included additional rows for governments that both formed and dissolved within the same year. This has now been corrected for the following cabinets (listed by their IDs):
1033, 2027, 2045, 3003, 4005, 4049, 4059, 5002, 5028, 5030, 5036, 6012, 7010, 8009, 8031, 8035, 9015, 10015, 10023, 10028, 10030, 10059, 12017, 12027, 13008, 13017, 14008, 17004, 17012, 17030, 18007, 18015, 18017, 23012, 24003, 24010, 27012, 27022, 27035, 28018, 29007, 30020, 31012, 33019, 34022, 34052, 36019, 36035, 36059.
February 25, 2026
All REPDEM Basic datasets
New cabinets formed between September 2025 until the end of 2025 have been coded, with cab_id: 5044, 5045, 13037, 20020, 24021, 34069, 34070, 34071, 34072, 34073, 34074, 34075, 34076, 36063.
Terminations until February 2026 have been coded, with cab_id: 12034, 18027, 20019, 24020, 34068.
Discrepancies in seat figures for individual parties (seats_party) and the total number of seats in the lower chamber of parliament (seats_total) have been corrected for a number of cabinets. The full list of cabinet IDs is: 1024, 1025, 1026, 1027, 1035, 2028, 2029, 2033, 2034, 2047, 3032, 3034, 3035, 3036, 3037, 3038, 3039, 3040, 3041, 5026, 5027, 5032, 5033, 5034, 5035, 5036, 5037, 5038, 5041, 5042, 5043, 6023, 6031, 6032, 6033, 7016, 7017, 7018, 7019, 7020, 7021, 7022, 7023, 9030, 9031, 9032, 9033, 10050, 10051, 10052, 10057, 10058, 10059, 10060, 10061, 10062, 10067, 10068, 10069, 10069, 12030, 12032, 12033, 13022, 13023, 13024, 13025, 13026, 13027, 13028, 14008, 14008, 14009, 14023, 14024, 14025, 14026, 15009, 15012, 15013, 15014, 15015, 16028, 16029, 17032, 18014, 18019, 18020, 18021, 18022, 18023, 18024, 20009, 20010, 20011, 21014, 21015, 21016, 21021, 21022, 22008, 23014, 23015, 23017, 24003, 24004, 24013, 24017, 24018, 24019, 26016, 26017, 26017, 26020, 26021, 26022, 26023, 27016, 27017, 27018, 27019, 27020, 27031, 27032, 27033, 27034, 27035, 27036, 27037, 28016, 28017, 28018, 28019, 29003, 29004, 29005, 29006, 29010, 29011, 29015, 29016, 29019, 29020, 30018, 30019, 30020, 30021, 30023, 34063, 34065, 34066, 34067.
All variables based on party seat shares have been recalculated for the affected cabinets.
September 30, 2025
All basic datasets
New governments formed between July and mid-September 2025 have been coded (2 cabinets).
Government terminations occurring from July through mid-September 2025 have been coded (4 cabinets).
Cabinet dataset
New Variables
A variable (cab_seatshare_partyX) that records the cabinet seat share for each party in a cabinet has been added to the cabinet-level datasets. A variable that measures the share of ministers for each party in a cabinet (partycab_minshare_partyX) has been added to the PAGED cabinet-level data.
Corretions
The distribution of minister portfolios (portfolioN_partyX) and the number of ministers (num_ministers) have been corrected for a number of cabinets. The distribution has been corrected in PAGED data, while the number of ministers has been corrected in both cabinet-level datasets (i.e., REPDEM basic and PAGED WE+CEE).
June 26, 2025
Cabinet and Party datasets
New Variables
This update introduces a new cabinet ID structure, which takes the name cab_id, and the old standard, which takes the name old_cab_id. The old standard (variable old_cab_id) is structured as follows: The first two digits identify the country, and the last two digits identify the cabinet. The new identification standard (variable cab_id) is structured as follows: The first two digits identify the country, and the last three digits identify the cabinet.
The REPDEM Basic Dataset also introduces a new variable named cab_caretaker, which more clearly indicates caretaker governments. Additionally, two variables—median_party_economic_1st and median_party_economic_2nd—indicate whether the party is the party of the median legislator on the economic left-right dimension. Details on how this variable has been coded are available in the “Note on coding principles.”
To facilitate users who wish to exclude governments or years when fundamental democratic principles are not upheld in a country, this update also includes indices from V-Dem in the REPDEM Basic Dataset. Specifically, the V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index, Liberal Democracy Index, Participatory Democracy Index, Deliberative Democracy Index, and Egalitarian Democracy Index are included.
Variables that have been introduced in the Party Dataset include; 1) seatshare_party indicating the share of seats a party has in the lower chamber, 2) incumbent indicating if a party was a member of the previous cabinet, 3) three additional median party identifier variables (median_party_economic, median_party_ches_lrecon, and, median_party_ches_lrgen), and 4) preference variables for each party, drawing on the Manifesto data and Chapel Hill Expert Surveys.
Cabinet updates
Since the last update, new cabinets have been coded. The cabinets have cab_id: 1035, 2047, 6033, 8039, 9033, 13036, 14026, 18027, 20019, 21022, 27038, 27039, 33031, 33032, 36061 and 36062.
Additionally, terminations and updates have been coded. The cabinets have cab_id: 5029, 5031, 5032, 5033, 5034, 5035,5043, 6032, 11005, 11010, 12032, 13035, 33030, 14025, 1709, 18018, 21018, 21019, 21020, 21021, 27037, 23027, 26018, 26019.
Finally, the variable cab_duration_max for cab_id: 32002, 32003, 32015, 32016, 32032, 34007, 34008, 34009, 34011, 34012, 34013, 34018, 34029, 34030, 36020, 36021 in the REPDEM Basic Datasets has been corrected to rectify a previous coding error.
All preference-related variables in the cabinet dataset (e.g., variables beginning with cab_polar, cab_wpolar, etc.) have been recalculated to account for minor coding errors and improve party matching between datasets.
Missing data
This update addresses some missing data identified in previous updates.
March 18, 2025
Five new countries (Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, and New Zealand) added to the REPDEM Basic datasets
December 21, 2024
Cabinet and Party datasets
New Variables
This update introduces new dummy variables for each cabinet type. More specifically it introduces the variables cab_minority (indicating a minority cabinet), cab_sp_minority (indicating a single-party minority cabinet), cab_sp_majority (indicating a single-party majority cabinet), cab_coal_minority (indicating a minority coalition) and cab_sub_minority ( indicating a substantive minority cabinet).
Furthermore, the variable cab_duration_full has been added to indicate if the cabinet terminates due to technical reasons and its relative duration is greater than 90%.
Additionally, this update introduces the variable term_disc_conflict which captures the conflict between coalition parties (policy and/or personnel) thus summarising previous variables term_disc_conflict_pol=1 and term_disc_conflict_pers=1.
Finally, this update includes the new variable cab_seatshare_supported, which captures the cabinet seat share including formal support parties.
Cabinet updates
Since the last update, new cabinets have been coded. The cabinets have cab_id: 541, 542, 838, 932, 1122, 1232, 1425, 1517, 1732, 1825, 1826, 2327, 2419, 2622, 2623, 2819, and 3023.
The variable cab_composition for cab_id 540 and 2118-2120 in the cabinet datasets has been corrected to rectify a previous coding error.
The variable cab_strength_lower for cab_id 525 in the cabinet datasets has been corrected to rectify a previous coding error.
Additionally, some parties were incorrectly coded as having seats in parliament that belonged to other parties. Both the Cabinet-level and Party-level datasets have been updated to correct these errors. The affected cabinets have cab_id: 540, 2618-2620, and 2807-2809.
Missing data
This update addresses the missing data identified in previous updates. It now includes full information on the variables pres_pop and invest_exist. All variables created from party manifesto data for Luxembourg were previously missing but have now been added.
Yearly and Monthly dataset
There were missing rows and additional rows for a few cabinets in the Governments Datasets – Monthly and Yearly Data. This has now been corrected to rectify a previous coding error.
September 30, 2024
Cabinet and party datasets
The variables dim_second_median and dim_second_median_2nd in the cabinet datasets and median_second in the party datasets have been corrected to rectify a previous coding error. This only affect cabinets in Western Europe (country_id = 1–17) and Croatia (country_id =30).
Additionally, a few parties were incorrectly coded as having seats in parliament that belonged to other parties. Both the Cabinet-level and Party-level datasets have been updated to correct these changes. The parties and cabinets are:
Cabinets | Incorrect party | Correct party |
2326 | A/P (230037) | JV (230019) |
2415-2418 | LPS (240017) | LVŽS (240001) |
2923 | Konkretno (290023) | Levica (290022) |
Potential governments datasets
The WE+CEE potential governments dataset incorrectly included potential governments with a mix of parties represented in the lower house and parties represented only in the upper house for some bicameral systems, resulting in a bloated data set with a large number of effectively empty rows. This has been corrected, drastically reducing the number of potential governments.
New variable
A new variable, real_nonpartisan, has been added to indicate when the actually formed government was non-partisan, and take the value 0 when the actually formed government was partisan, and 1 when the actually formed government was non-partisan. When real_nonpartisan equals 1, this also means that no potential government in that choice set has real_gov equal to 1. Most users probably prefer to drop, or exclude, these observations from the analysis.
June 29, 2024
Cabinet and potential cabinets data sets
All polarization variables (cab_polar*, cab_wpolar*, parl_polar*, pcab_polar*, pcab_wpolar*) have been updated to rectify a previous coding error. The data sets where these variables have been updated are: Basic; WE+CEE; Potential governments, Basic; and Potential governments, WE+CEE.
New variables
To facilitate simpler matching between different cabinet-level data sets, a new variable, unique_id, has been created to identify unique combinations of cab_id and an alphanumerically sorted version of cab_composition2 or potential_government. The variable value is a SHA256 hash of concatenations of cab_id and the cabinet composition variable in the following format: cab_id.cab_composition2, e.g., 101.10001,10004,10005, with a resulting SHA256 hash of:
5127ce47a681b23eda165288b856672a97712b78d032b1766733ac1a9ce748ff.
Changed variable names
The “potential_coalition” variable has been renamed to “potential_government” as it also includes single-party governments in the potential governments’ data sets.
Updated cabinet data
The following cabinets have been updated to include termination data (term_* variables and date-related variables): 246, 540, 837, 931, 1121, 1231, 1424, 1516, 1824, 2326, 2621, 2818, and 3022.
Party data sets
Corrected, erroneous manifesto_id values for several parties in Italy. The affected parties were 100020, 100024, 100035, 100036, and 100054 for cabinets 1066, 1067 and 1068.
Other corrected variables
Datasets | Variable | Cabinet ID | Old value | New value | Comment |
Basic | cab_name | 931 | Vardakar II | Varadkar II | Fixed misspelling of Varadkar’s name |
Basic | cab_composition2 | 1067 | 100031,100031,100060,100061 | 100031,100029,100060,100061 | Incorrect party_id for party PD |
Basic | cab_composition2 | 1068 | 100031,100018,100031,100020 ,100061,100060 | 100031,100018,100029,100020 ,100061,100060 | Incorrect party_id for party PD
|
Basic | cab_party2 | 1067 | 100031 | 100029 | Incorrect party_id for party PD |
Basic | cab_party3 | 1068 | 100031 | 100029 | Incorrect party_id for party PD |
Basic | govtype | 341 | 2 (Single party majority) | 3 (MWC) | Previous value was incorrect |
Basic | govtype | 461 | 2 (Single party majority) | 4 (Surplus majority government) | Previous value was incorrect |
Basic | date_out | 2736 | 2022-06-12 | 2023-06-12 | Wrong year |
Basic | year_month_out | 2736 | 2022-06 | 2023-06 | Wrong year |
Basic | year_out | 2736 | 2022 | 2023 | Wrong year |
Basic | cab_duration | 2736 | 199 | 564 |
|
Basic | cab_duration_relativ e | 2736 | 0.173 | 0.49 |
|
Basic | date_in | 2737 | 2022-06-15 | 2023-06-15 | Wrong year |
Basic | year_month_in | 2737 | 2022-06 | 2023-06 | Wrong year |
Basic | year_in | 2737 | 2022 | 2023 | Wrong year |
Basic | cab_duration_max | 2737 | 948 | 583 |
|
Potential governments | real_gov | 1067
| 0 | 1 | unique_id = f3d10cee06ca4ee638b2b1c5fc9cc65e25d c38b67356a4d50780353d5761b670 |
Potential governments | real_gov | 1068 | 0 | 1 | unique_id = c3a0009b262981b6127c07bc1361a9ad14 ad221f62884ca75f0fae1227798b12 |
March 22, 2024
Some minor errors in the data have been corrected:
- The type of new government (newegov_type) variable has been updated and now includes non-partisan governments.
- Various minor updates and corrections.
February 27, 2024
Since the December release there has been some minor changes and additions to the main datasets:
- The ‘Type of government’- variable and the variable ‘cab_mwc’ corrected in the cabinet-level datasets.
- Seats-variables moved to the end of datasets (i.e., seats_party X, upper_seats_party X).
- Preference-variables and party codes for each government member added in the potential government datasets.
- The Date format changed in the CSV-files to ”YYYY-MM-DD”.