Exploring Party Positions in the Third Millennium. Expert Surveys, Manifesto Studies and Voting Advice Applications

Abstract

The study of party positions has made tremendous progress with advances in data collection. Next to party manifestos, researchers can now rely on expert surveys. A third data source is coming of age as well: VAAs. Not only do these produce extensive data on voters; they also generate extensive data on political parties through candidate surveys. Still, we know little about the relationship between VAA estimates of party placements versus those generated by other sources. How do VAAs perform in terms of their measurement properties? Are they complement or substitute for other data sources. This panel brings together papers that (1) explore the validity, reliability, and invariance of VAA measures of party positions and (2) compare VAAs with other data sources.

Title	Details
The reliability and validity of the iterative expert survey approach for measuring parties' policy positions	View Paper Details
Do parties frame policies in terms of owned issues? Parties’ policy position motivations in Voting Advice Applications in Belgium	View Paper Details
Estimating the position of political parties: comparison of methods	View Paper Details