Potsdam researchers launch Party-Check voting tool ahead of Berlin state election

Launch of the Party-Check application

A research team from the University of Potsdam, headed by political scientist Jan Philipp Thomeczek, has published an online voting advice tool called Party-Check ahead of the Berlin state election on 20 September 2026. The application offers voters an alternative method to identify political parties that align with their personal policy preferences for the Berlin House of Representatives (Abgeordnetenhaus). The tool presents 18 targeted questions addressing prominent regional and national policy debates.

The selected questions encompass key election topics in the German capital, including housing expropriations, the development of community schools, climate protection policies, and political cooperation or boundaries regarding the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Unlike traditional voter tools that use simple binary choices, Party-Check provides an answer scale consisting of 20 distinct rating steps. Users also possess the ability to rate the personal importance of each issue, allowing the algorithm to weight specific policy categories according to voter priorities.

Scientific methodology and expert evaluation

At the conclusion of the survey, Party-Check calculates and presents a percentage breakdown indicating how closely the user matches each political party across specific policy areas. The underlying calculation mechanism differs from conventional voter tools such as Wahl-O-Mat. Rather than relying on self-assessments provided directly by the party headquarters, Party-Check bases its evaluations on the Laender Expert Survey.

Conducted by Thomeczek since 2024, the Laender Expert Survey gathers systematic evaluations from political science scholars to classify party stances. This academic approach aims to provide an external evaluation of party positions rather than unverified party self-descriptions. In addition to testing their alignment, users interacting with the online platform can voluntarily choose to donate their submitted response data to the University of Potsdam team to support ongoing academic research on voting behavior.

Language options and nationwide scope

The Berlin deployment of Party-Check incorporates expanded language accessibility. For the first time, the platform is accessible in an English version alongside German. Furthermore, the development team has implemented a dedicated Turkish-language version specifically tailored for voters in the Berlin state parliamentary election.

The Berlin release forms part of a wider state-level research rollout. The University of Potsdam team is providing Party-Check for all five state elections taking place across Germany in 2026. The platform was previously deployed for the federal election (Bundestagswahl) in 2025, expanding its comparative dataset across different German electorates and legislative levels.

Arrival of the official Wahl-O-Mat tool

The debut of Party-Check comes shortly before the launch of the official Wahl-O-Mat platform for the Berlin election, which is scheduled to go live on Monday, 24 August 2026. Wahl-O-Mat is produced through a joint collaboration between the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale fuer politische Bildung) and the Berlin State Agency for Civic Education (Landeszentrale fuer politische Bildung).

Wahl-O-Mat features 38 policy theses, more than double the number in Party-Check. All 17 political parties competing with district or state lists in the Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus election have submitted formal responses. Users on Wahl-O-Mat evaluate each thesis using a three-stage response model consisting of agree, neutral, and disagree options, offering voters two contrasting diagnostic instruments before the 20 September 2026 ballot.