Dimensionality of Political Attitudes Across the EU: A Comparison Using Data From the 'EUvox' Voting Advice Application

Taking advantage of the multi-country datasets generated by the “EUvox” VAA for the 2014 European Parliament election, this study attempts to examine the dimensionality of national political spheres within the EU in a comparative fashion. Following weighting to population parameters using a number of demographic and political identity variables, datasets from different nation-states were subjected to three post-hoc dimension reduction statistical techniques. Technical criteria for detecting dimensions suggest that the attitudes of VAA users are structured across dimensions that differ in both number and substantive content between different nation-states despite the questionnaires being designed with a three dimensional space in mind (economic values, social values, attitudes toward further European integration). Less trivially, analyses when a three dimensional space is forced onto the data reveal differences in the explanatory characteristics and force of the three aforementioned factors, more so in the social than the economic values or European integration underlying dimensions.