Attitude towards parties and politicians after the parliamentary
elections; voting behaviour and political knowledge.

Topics: Own opinion leadership in political questions: effort to
convince others of a candidate or a party; campaign aid; attempts to
become convinced by a party or by a candidate during the election
campaign; participation in the election; party preference: first vote
and second vote; most important political issues of the last four years
and judgement of the goverment´s preformance to handle these issues;
judgement of the performance of the Federal Government in general;
satisfaction with democracy; significance of the party which forms the
government for the respondent and for his personal vote; democracy as
the best form of government; recall voting in 1998; judgement of the
political work of the preferred party during the last four years;
judgement of the representation of the voter by the representatives;
perceived representation by a party and a candidate; party affiliation
(ranking); party identification; sympathy scale for the parties;
left-right classification of parties; political participation by
writing letters, participation in a demonstration and in an initiative;
judgement of the individual liberty and human rights in Germany;
assessment of corruption in Germany; self-assessment on a left-right
continuum; knowledge test: acting Interior Minister, number of the
federal states and the member states of the European Union;
constituency number of the respondent; date of the voting decision;
remembrance of the direct candidate in the constituency, his name and
his party membership; interest in politics; frequency of use of
information sources redarding the elections; referring selected
political issues to the parties; relevance of issues; competence of the
possible government coalitions to solve problems; trustworthiness and
assertiveness of Gerhard Schröder and Edmund Stoiber.

Demography: Age (year of birth); sex; education degree; marital
status; living together with a partner; labour union membership and
labour union members in household; further memberships; temporal size
of the gainful employment; profession (ISCO88) and required education;
professional position; area of business; employment of the partner;
profession of the partner and required education; professional position
of the partner; area of business of the partner; monthly household net
income; size of household; persons under 18 years living in the
household; frequency of church attendance; religiousness; denomination;
spoken language in the household.

Additionally coded was: Federal state; municipality size.