Debate Reaction Ideal Points: Political Ideology Measurement Using Real-Time Reaction Data

Abstract

Ideal point models have become a powerful tool for defining and measuring the ideology of many kinds of political actors, including legislators, judges, campaign donors, and members of the general public. We extend the application of ideal point models to the public using a novel data source: real-time reactions to statements by candidates in the 2012 presidential debates. Using these reactions as inputs to an ideal point model, we estimate individual-level ideology and evaluate the quality of the measure. Debate reaction ideal points provide a method for estimating a continuous, individual-level measure of ideology that avoids survey response biases, provides better estimates for moderates and the politically unengaged, and reflects the content of salient political discourse relevant to viewers’ attitudes and vote choices. As expected, we find that debate reaction ideal points are more extreme among respondents who strongly identify with a political party, but retain substantial within-party variation. Ideal points are also more extreme among respondents who are more politically interested. Using topical subsets of the debate statements, we find that ideal points in the sample are more moderate for foreign policy than for economic or domestic policy.

Analyzing political party positions through multi-language twitter text embeddings

“…However, survey responses have inherent weaknesses that individuals may be unwilling to accurately report their real opinions. The limitation is not necessarily mitigated by posing additional policy questions or employing more sophisticated algorithms to analyze responses (Argyle et al, 2021). The other most prevalent method for measuring ideology is the Nominate score, originating from the work of Poole and Rosenthal (2000) and their subsequent studies.…”

“…For many years, the simplest and most widely used method to gauge ideology in the United States has involved asking individuals to position themselves on a spectrum from “extremely conservative” to “extremely liberal.” However, survey responses have inherent weaknesses that individuals may be unwilling to accurately report their real opinions. The limitation is not necessarily mitigated by posing additional policy questions or employing more sophisticated algorithms to analyze responses (Argyle et al, 2021 ). The other most prevalent method for measuring ideology is the Nominate score, originating from the work of Poole and Rosenthal ( 2000 ) and their subsequent studies.…”