The CCES is a 50,000+ person national stratified sample survey administered by YouGov Polimetrix. Half of the questionnaire consists of Common Content asked of all 30,000+ people, and half of the questionnaire consists of Team Content designed by each individual participating team and asked of a subset of 1,000 people. In addition, several teams may pool their resources to create Group Content.
The survey consists of two waves in election years. In the pre-election phase, respondents answer two-thirds of the questionnaire. This segment of the survey asks about general political attitudes, various demographic factors, assessment of roll call voting choices, and political information. The pre-election phase is administered late September to late October and rolled out in three distinct time-periods, the end of September, the middle of October, and the end of October. Spacing of interviews across these intervals allows researchers to gauge the effects of campaign information and events on the state and district electorates. In the post-election phase, respondents answer the other third of the questionnaire, mostly consisting of items related to the election that just occurred. The post-election phase is administered in November.
In non-election years, the survey consits of a single wave conducted in the early fall.
Common Content consists of approximately 60 questions, with about 40 in the pre-election wave and about 20 in the post-election wave. These questions are included on all administered surveys and amount to a 30,000+ person national sample survey. Common Content is asked at the beginning of each survey.
In addition to these questions, YouGov Polimetrix provides demographic indicators, party identification, ideology, and for most states, validated vote.
Common Content Data, Guides, and Cumulative Files can be explored here.
Group Content arises from pooling of resources of several teams. These teams may wish to devote, say, 8 questions to a particular topic, such as religion and politics or tax policy. If 10 teams can agree on 8 Group Content questions, then their questions will be asked on each of their individual Team surveys. Since the individual Team Content is the same for these 8 questions, they have effectively conducted a survey of 10,000 people (10 teams times 1,000 respondents each).
There are opportunities to ask questions particular to individual states if a sufficiently large number of teams are willing to trade questions across samples. (See the discussion under Sample Design.)