Mapping the Austrian political spectrum with the help of VAAs

Authors

  • Sebastian Jäckle Universität Freiburg
  • Pascal D. König Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15203/ozp.2407.vol47iss4

Keywords:

Voting Advice Applications, party positions, Austrian national elections, scaling, wahlkabine

Abstract

This paper uses data from the Austrian Voting Advice Application (VAA) wahlkabine.at to locate parties in policy spaces for the 2006, 2008, 2013 and 2017 national elections. It formulates an approach that combines positional information from the VAA data with information about issue saliences that stems from the VAA itself as well as from manifestos coded by the regularly conducted Austrian National Election Study. The VAA-inherent and the external weights serve to calibrate party policy spaces that underlie the VAA data. The paper depicts the Austrian political party space by means of a two-dimensional multidimensional scaling (MDS) map, and furthermore assesses the usefulness of the two weighting procedures. The findings suggest that the use of the internal weights cannot make much of a difference in the present form. In contrast, the external weights not only alter the structure of the party space but also enhance the confidence in the results for substantial reasons.

Author Biographies

  • Sebastian Jäckle, Universität Freiburg

    Sebastian Jäckle is researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg, Germany. His research centers on political elites, political sociology, appearance effects in elections, and attitudes in transnational comparison. Recent work has appeared in West European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, Berliner Journal für Soziologie, Journal of Homosexuality and PS: Political Science and Politics.

  • Pascal D. König, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

    Pascal D. König is researcher at the Institute of Political Science at the Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany. His research mainly deals with political communication, party competition, and policies regarding digital technologies. Recent work has appeared in West European politics, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Review of Policy Research, and Big Data & Society.

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Published

2019-02-28

Issue

Section

Research Article

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