Czech political candidate and donation datasets

Area of Science:

• Political Science
• Computational Social Science
• Data Science

Background:

• Comprehensive datasets are crucial for analyzing political behavior and electoral dynamics.
• Existing data on Czech political candidates and donations are fragmented, hindering in-depth research.
• The need for a unified resource to study electoral trends and candidate profiles in the Czech Republic.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and describe the Czech Political Candidate Dataset (CPCD).
• To introduce and describe the Czech Political Donation Dataset (CPDD).
• To provide a foundation for future research on Czech politics, elections, and campaign finance.

Main Methods:

• Compilation of candidate data from municipal, regional, national, and European Parliament elections since 1993.
• Development of algorithms to match candidates across multiple elections using personal information.
• Integration of political donation data from official records for 12 leading parties (2017-2023).

Main Results:

• The creation of the Czech Political Candidate Dataset (CPCD) with detailed candidate information.
• The establishment of the Czech Political Donation Dataset (CPDD) detailing individual donations.
• Both datasets are publicly available for research purposes.

Conclusions:

• The CPCD and CPDD represent significant resources for the study of Czech political landscape.
• These datasets facilitate novel analyses of candidate trajectories, party strategies, and campaign finance.
• The availability of these datasets is expected to stimulate further academic inquiry into Czech politics.