“The CCS Candidate Benchmarking Survey is a joint multinational project whose objective is to collect data on candidates for national parliamentary elections in different countries using a common core questionnaire to allow comparisons between countries. The data collection includes candidate surveys as well as relevant contextual information about the candidate’s constituency and the political system as a whole.

In part because of recent changes in the way political parties function as intermediaries between citizens and the state, individual candidates – their activities, attitudes and beliefs – have become an attractive and promising object of research. In response to this growing importance, CCS surveys parliamentary candidates in national parliamentary elections in as many countries as possible.

CCS’s main candidate questionnaire focuses on the relationship between the candidate, the party and the voters. The campaign is a major topic of this core questionnaire, but other areas such as recruitment and transport patterns, issues and ideology, and democracy and representation are also included in the questionnaire.

The CCS is conducted in modules that have been in the field for about 6 years. Module I, which ran between 2005 and 2012, was conducted in 24 countries and covered 32 elections. Module II was implemented between 2013 and 2018 and included 30 elections in 21 countries. The current Module III is scheduled to be in the field from 2019 to 2024 (see data collection documents).”