Since 2009 the interdisciplinary, internationally renowned and competititive research focus 'political parties, election and representation' has been established at the University of Vienna. Within the research center VieCER this research focus will be continued with the aim to guarantee continuity and stability in election research, as well as to establish an internationally leading center for quantitative and interdisciplinary election research.

Through the excellence program of the Austrian Research Fund FWF, within the NFN-project 'Austrian National Election Study' (AUTNES), survey and text data from the general elections 2008 and 2013 have been collected. These data have been made available to the scientific community, used in high-quality scientific publications, provided for the general public and diffused into society (volume of third-party funding of approx. 6 million Euro). Following the AUTNES election studies 2008 and 2013, the AUTNES election study for the general election 2017 will be conducted within 'ACIER - Austrian Cooperative Infrastructure for Electoral Research', as a research cooperation of the University of Vienna, the University of Salzburg and the University of Innsbruck (financed by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research), running until 2019.

On the basis of the research focus 'integrated election research' and the 'Austrian National Election Study - AUTNES' the 'Vienna Center for Electoral Research' pursues the long-term aim of firmly establishing election research in the areas of Political Science, Communication Science, Economics and methodological research as a flagship of Social Science research at the University of Vienna.