Once Upon A Time … Forschungsgruppe Wahlen
At a small celebration marking the 50th anniversary of “Forschungsgruppe Wahlen” in 2024, Mannheim’s mayor Christian Specht praised the organization’s influence and its lasting contributions to political science. Today, nearly everyone in Germany has heard of Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, the research group responsible for election polling and analysis on national television. But few know that its roots trace back to the University of Mannheim.
As early as 1965, the School of Social Sciences at the University of Mannheim began conducting projections and forecasts for the national public broadcaster ZDF. The team was led by Rudolf Wildenmann, who had been appointed to the university’s newly created chair of political science in 1964 and went on to serve three terms as university president (1967–1968, 1969, and 1976–1979).
Previously, Wildenmann had worked as a journalist and at the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung), which gave him access to high-level political networks—connections that proved useful throughout his later academic career. He soon established ties with ZDF, which had begun broadcasting on April 1, 1963, and persuaded its senior editors that election research was a vital part of public service broadcasting. ZDF agreed and began funding a large number of social science surveys. Until 1972, Wildenmann himself provided live commentary during election broadcasts, drawing on analyses conducted at the University of Mannheim with support from its in-house computing center.
These early efforts laid the groundwork for the founding of “Forschungsgruppe Wahlen e. V.—Institut für Wahlanalysen und Gesellschaftsbeobachtung” in 1974. Established as an independent, non-profit organization, it was taken over and further developed by Wildenmann’s former research assistants. To this day, Forschungsgruppe Wahlen is responsible for delivering polling data and election night forecasts for ZDF.
Last year, Forschungsgruppe Wahlen launched the annual Rudolf Wildenmann Prize in honor of its founder’s pivotal role in establishing empirical electoral research in Germany.
Text: Dr. Sandra Eichfelder / August 2025