Candidacies to French elections since 1993

In addition to our article in La vie des idées, you will find here the database on candidacies to French elections since 1993 and our script which proposes an (imperfect) identification of candidates from one round to the other and one election to the other based on surnames and firstnames. Political shade grouping file and a script to generate article results are also available.

Data and scripts

1. The rds database for the R software : base_candidatEs_public.rds

1b. The csv database for the other software :base_candidatEs_public.csv.zip

2. Our identification script : Identification_base_candidatEs.R

Last update 09/2024: Identification_base_candidatEs_v2.R

3. The file for coding partis et and political partis based on the political "nuances" assigned by French Interior ministry: Etiquettes.ods

4. And the script to generate the results of our paper : Fissure_Digue.R

User guide

1. Download the R data and scripts in a single folder

2. Run Identification_base_candidatEs.R that will generate in the same folder a new database base_candidatEs_id.rds which contains id_personne identifiers, which enable to follow the candidates' election carrier.

3. The script Fissure_Digue.R generate the results published in La vie des idées and a few more others.

Documentation

The database is partly documented in the appendices of our article. A more complete documentation will be posted online soon.

Warning

Matching applications on the basis of first and last names inevitably generates errors due to homonyms. This is not the truth. This database should therefore be used with caution and reflection. Elle est plus adaptée pour un usage statistique que pour un suivi des carrières politiques individuelles.

Enjoy!