The literature on left–right party placements has drawn on multiple types of
data: manifesto content, survey responses of party elites, party voters, and
experts. The methodological literature has suggested these sources to be
biased in one or the other way. For instance, party voters display a centrist bias
in placing parties, expert surveys tend to produce estimates that are imprecise
in terms of timing (as experts use historic information), and manifestos typically
generate estimates that are much more volatile than survey-based measures.
The paper derives testable hypotheses about such biases and their linkages to
underlying issue positions. It then compares the answers of more than 4000
candidates in three consecutive national elections in Austria (2006, 2008, 2013)
with manifesto data, voter and expert surveys generated in proximity to the
relevant elections. The analysis thus takes a first step towards clarifying to what
extent the variation in left–right placements between different sources is driven
by methodological vs. substantive differences.
