Voter ideology in Western democracies: An update

In: European journal of political research: official journal of the European Consortium for Political Research, Band 42, Heft 1, S. 95-105

Abstract

In this article, we update and expand the measure of voter ideology we originally proposed in this journal in 1998. Our new measure combines party manifesto data most recently updated by Budge et al. (2001) with election return data. Assuming the comparability and relevance of left-right ideology, we estimate the median voter position in 25 Western democracies throughout most of the postwar period. With this measure, we are able to make cross-national comparisons of voter ideology among these countries, as well as cross-time comparisons within individual countries. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)