There is power in numbers. Starting in 2006, a consortium of 39 universities came together to create the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (now the Cooperative Election Study), the first truly large-scale and cooperative academic survey project aimed at studying American elections. Our joint efforts have produced national sample surveys in excess of 50,000 respondents for every recent federal election. In 2024, the CES included participation from hundreds of faculty and graduate students across 60 teams. Brian Schaffner (Tufts University), Jeremy Pope (BYU), Stephen Ansolabehere (Harvard University), and Marissa Shih (YouGov) coordinate the CES, which is administered by YouGov. The study has been supported by the National Science Foundation since 2010.
We invite you to join this unique project for 2025.
Design
We plan a national sample stratified by state, which permits the optimal study of states as well as national level opinion. The 2025 survey will be conducted on the Internet and consist of a single 20-minute questionnaire (10 minutes of common content and 10 minutes of team content).
Content
Half of the survey content will be Common Content, administered to all survey respondents, and half of the content will be team content, administered to 1,000 respondents for each team. The CES Planning Group will design the Common Content. Common Content consists of a battery of questions asked of all respondents to capture commonly asked questions, such as vote choice, as well as a handful of items for which it is uniquely advantageous to have a very large sample. Each team will design its own team content.
Deliverables
The project will deliver a 1,000-person survey covering your team’s content and a Common Content survey that consists of a subset of questions asked of all subjects. Team data will be embargoed for the private use of those participating teams.
Cost
The cost of the study is $14,000 for a 1,000-person sample. Additional cases can be purchased for $11 per case. To join the study, please contact Marissa Shih (marissa.shih@yougov.com) at YouGov.
Schedule
August, 2025: Team questionnaires dues to YouGov.
Nov., 2025: Survey in the field.
March 2026: Survey data delivered to teams.
More information, data from previous studies, and announcements can be found at https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/ces