A Common Left-Right Scale for Voters and Parties in Europe


Lo, James ; Proksch, Sven-Oliver ; Gschwend, Thomas


DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/pan/mpt028
URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-...
Document Type: Article
Year of publication: 2014
The title of a journal, publication series: Political Analysis
Volume: 22
Issue number: 2
Page range: 205-223
Place of publication: Oxford [u.a.]
Publishing house: Oxford Univ. Press
ISSN: 1047-1987 , 1476-4989
Publication language: English
Institution: Außerfakultäre Einrichtungen > Mannheim Centre for European Social Research - Research Department B
School of Social Sciences > Politische Wissenschaft, Quantitative Sozialwissenschaftliche Methoden (Gschwend 2007-)
Subject: 320 Political science
Abstract: This article presents a scaling approach to jointly estimate the locations of voters, parties, and European political groups on a common left-right scale. Although most comparative research assumes that cross-national comparisons of voters and parties are possible, few correct for systematic biases commonly known to exist in surveys or examine whether survey data are comparable across countries. Our scaling method addresses scale perception in surveys and links cross-national surveys through new bridging observations. We apply our approach to the 2009 European Election Survey and demonstrate that the improvement in party estimates that one gains from fixing various survey bias issues is significant. Our scaling strategy provides left-right positions of voters and of 162 political parties, and we demonstrate that variables based on rescaled voter and party positions on the left-right dimension significantly improve the fit of a cross-national vote choice model.

Dieser Eintrag ist Teil der Universitätsbibliographie.




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Lo, James ; Proksch, Sven-Oliver ; Gschwend, Thomas ORCID: 0000-0002-8656-9622 (2014) A Common Left-Right Scale for Voters and Parties in Europe. Political Analysis Oxford [u.a.] 22 2 205-223 [Article]


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ORCID: Lo, James ; Proksch, Sven-Oliver ; Gschwend, Thomas ORCID: 0000-0002-8656-9622

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