Estimating parties’ policy positions through voting advice applications: Some methodological considerations

The past few years have seen the advent and proliferation of Voting Advice (or Aid) Applications (VAAs), which offer voting advice on the basis of calculating the ideological congruence between citizens and political actors. Although VAA data have often been used to test many empirical questions regarding voting behaviour and political participation, we know little about the approaches used by VAAs to estimate the positions of political parties. This article presents the most common aspects of the VAA approach and examines some methodological issues regarding the phrasing of statements, the format of response scales, the reliability of coding statements into response scales and the reliability and validity of scaling items into dimensions. The article argues that VAAs have a lot of potential but there is also much space for methodological improvements, and therefore concludes with some recommendations for designing VAAs

What to do (and not to do) with the comparative manifestos project data

The Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) data are the most popular source for parties' positions on the left–right and other ideological and policy dimensions. Over the past few years, several researchers have identified various methodological problems in the CMP data, but third-party users rarely acknowledge them. This article classifies the problems associated with the CMP into four areas: (1) theoretical underpinnings of the coding scheme; (2) document selection; (3) coding reliability; and (4) scaling. The article reviews each area systematically and concludes with a set of recommendations regarding the use of the CMP dat

Explaining Conspiracy Beliefs and Scepticism around the COVID-19 Pandemic

Public opinion on COVID-19 provides new empirical evidence for the debate on the ideological contours of conspiracy theories. I report findings from a web survey in Greece where participants were recruited via paid advertising on Facebook and the study sample was adjusted for age, gender, education, domicile, and region of residence using a nationally representative reference sample. I find that beliefs about conspiracy theories are more correlated than the values associated with established political ideologies, and that conspiracy beliefs and scepticism about the pandemic are best explained by belief in unrelated political and medical conspiracy theories. No other demographic or attitudinal variable has such a strong influence, and the results are robust to different statistical specifications. In comparison, the effect of ideology measured by left-right self-placement is rather negligible and further moderated by trust in government. The results have implications for the strategies aimed at fighting disinformation during public health emergencies.Die öffentliche Meinung zum Thema Covid-19 liefert neue empirische Befunde für die Debatte über das ideologische Wesen von Verschwörungstheorien. Wir berichten über die Ergebnisse einer Online-Umfrage in Griechenland, für die die Teilnehmer über bezahlte Anzeigen auf Facebook gewonnen wurden. Diese Stichprobe wurde anschließend nach Alter, Geschlecht, Bildung, Wohnort undWohnregion unter Zugrundelegung einer national repräsentativen Referenzstichprobe gewichtet. Wir stellten dabei fest, dass verschwörungstheoretische Überzeugungen stärker korrelieren als die Werte, die mit etablierten politischen Ideologien assoziiert werden, und dass Verschwörungsglaube und Zweifel an der Pandemie am besten durch den Glauben an miteinander unverbundene politische und medizinische Verschwörungstheorien erklärt werden können. Keine andere demografische oder einstellungsbezogene Variable hat einen so starken Einuss, und die Ergebnisse sind verschiedenen statistischen Spezifikationen gegenüber robust. Im Vergleich ist der Effekt von Ideologien, die mithilfe der Links-Rechts-Selbsteinschätzung gemessen wurden, eher vernachl ässigbar und weithin durch Regierungsvertrauen gekennzeichnet. Die Resultate haben Auswirkungen auf die Entwicklung von Strategien zur Bekämpfung der Desinformation in Fällen von gesundheitspolitischen Notlagen.L’opinion publique sur le Covid-19 fournit de nouvelles données empiriques au débat sur les contours idéologiques des théories du complot. Cette note de recherche rend compte des résultats d’un sondage en Grèce dont les participant.e.s ont été recruté.e.s via des publicités payées sur Facebook. L’échantillon d’étude a ensuite été ajusté par repondération de l’âge, le genre, le niveau éducationnel, le domicile et la région de résidence en utilisant un échantillon national représentatif de référence. On constate que les croyances de complot sont plus corrélées que les valeurs associées à des idéologies politiques établies, et que les croyances de complot ainsi que le scepticisme relatif à la pandémie s’expliquent le mieux par des croyances dans des théories de complot politiques et médicales indépendantes les unes des autres. Il s’agit de la seule variable démographique ou attitudinale qui exerce une telle influence et les résultats ne dépendent pas des différentes spécifications statistiques. En revanche, l’influence de l’idéologie, telle qu’on la mesure selon l’auto-placement sur l’échelle gauche-droite est négligeable et modérée selon la confiance à l’égard du gouvernement. Les résultats peuvent s’appliquer aux stratégies qui visent à lutter contre la désinformation du public dans des situations d’urgence sanitaire.Introduction Methods Political Attitudes, Conspiracy Beliefs and COVID-19 Scepticism Trust in Institutions Political Knowledge Health and Socio-Economic Variables Participants and Study Size Sample Adjustment Quantitative Variables and Statistical Methods Results Discussion Acknowledgements Biography Open Research Supporting Information Reference

Challenging the Manifesto Project Data Monopoly: Estimating Parties’ Policy Position Time-Series Using Expert and Mass Survey Data

In this research note we propose a novel approach for generating time-series for party positions as an alternative to the estimates provided by the Manifesto Project. Our approach combines multiple expert surveys from different years, filling up the missing data using a multiple imputation algorithm that uses additional information from mass surveys. We illustrate this approach by estimating time-series for eight European countries for periods up to 50 years and show that our estimates are comparable, if not superior, in richness and face validity to those of the Manifesto Project. We conclude that our approach can easily generate data that can be used to explore the robustness of empirical analyses using party position data and serve as valid benchmarks for computational text scaling and crowd-sourced manual coding of party manifestos

An iterative expert survey approach for estimating parties’ policy positions

This article introduces the iterative expert survey approach in estimating parties’ policy positions. Methodologically, the proposed approach is based on the tradition of ‘judgemental’ coding in the content analysis of political text, and incorporates the idea of anonymous iteration among a panel of expert coders taken from the method known as ‘Delphi’. Anonymous iteration presents an effective way of reducing the random error, and potential bias arising from inter-expert/coder disagreement evident in other popular methods. I provide an empirical demonstration of the approach by estimating parties’ policy positions in the context of a voting advice application in Germany, and argue that the method has considerable potential to generate valid and reliable data on party positions cross-nationally and retrospectivel

COVID-19 Conspiracy Beliefs and Vaccination Intentions among Social Media Users

More than a year after the introduction of vaccines against COVID-19, inoculation remains inconsistent and variable across countries. In this paper, we introduce a multi-item scale of COVID-19 related misinformation, skepticism, and conspiracy theories and investigate the effects of these beliefs on vaccine hesitancy. We report findings from a survey in Greece where participants were recruited via paid advertising on Facebook and the study sample was adjusted for demographic variables using a nationally representative reference sample. We show that the endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs is the primary factor driving vaccine hesitancy, far exceeding the effect of all other demographic and attitudinal variables, including health status. Furthermore, a pre-registered randomized survey experiment showed that the effect cannot be attributed to respondents’ exposure to the COVID-19 conspiracy theory questions of the survey. The paper concludes by discussing potential public policy implications for combating misinformation and promoting health literacy among social media users

Who Believes the Novel Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories?

Η παρούσα εργασία αποτελεί μια πρώτη προσέγγιση των αποτελεσμάτων μιας έρευνας σχετικά με την απήχηση που βρίσκουν οι θεωρίες συνωμοσίας στους χρήστες των μέσων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης στην Ελλάδα. Πρόκειται για μία διαδικτυακή έρευνα με δομημένο ερωτηματολόγιο, στην οποία οι συμμετέχοντες κλήθηκαν να λάβουν μέρος μέσω ανακοινώσεων και καταχωρήσεων σε μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης. Τα δεδομένα σταθμίστηκαν βάσει μιας τηλεφωνικής έρευνας που πραγματοποιήθηκε σε αντιπροσωπευτικό δείγμα του πληθυσμού. Τα αποτελέσματα δείχνουν πως ο κατεξοχήν ερμηνευτικός παράγοντας των θεωριών συνωμοσίας για τον νέο κορωνοϊό είναι ο βαθμός αποδοχής θεωριών συνωμοσίας που αφορούν εντελώς διαφορετικά θέματα (π.χ. την κρίση της ελληνικής οικονομίας). Τα αποτελέσματα συγκλίνουν στο ότι οι πεποιθήσεις γύρω από τις θεωρίες συνωμοσίας οφείλονται σε βαθύτερα ψυχολογικά αίτια, με σαφείς συνέπειες ως προς τη χάραξη πολιτικών ενάντια στην παραπληροφόρηση.The article presents some preliminary findings from a survey on conspiracy beliefs among social media users in Greece. The participants were invited to complete a web survey via announcements and advertisements on social media, and the data were weighted using a reference sample from a nationally representative telephone survey. The results show that the foremost explanatory factor of conspiracy beliefs about the novel coronavirus is the acceptance of conspiracy beliefs about entirely different topics (e.g. the Greek financial crisis). The results point to the deep psychological roots of conspiracy beliefs with important implications for the design of policies in the battle against misinformation

The Impact of Voting Advice Applications on Electoral Turnout: Evidence from Greece

A new aspect of electoral campaigns in Europe, and increasingly elsewhere as well, has been the proliferation of the online voter information tools, widely known in the political science community as Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). By accessing VAAs, users are provided with information about the degree of congruence between their policy preferences and those of different parties or candidates. Although the exact mechanisms have not been rigorously investigated, a series of studies across European countries, such as Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have demonstrated a link between the use of VAAs and electoral turnout. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this growing literature by analyzing previously untapped data from Greece, extending the empirical literature to a country where VAA effects have not been investigated before. The analysis indicates that the effect of VAAs in Greece is marginal to non-existent while there seems to be no evidence of the hypothesized information mechanism which purportedly drives such effects. The paper concludes with suggestions that future studies of VAA effects on turnout can address in their design