1. Calculating the nearest political party
Euandi 2019 shows the overlap between the political parties’ positions and the user's preferences. In order to simplify the interpretation of the results, the latter are expressed in terms of a percentage of overlap. 0% indicates that a political party and a user’s preferences do not overlap at all, 100% indicates that they completely overlap.
Technically, for calculating a user’s closest candidate, we use the so called “Manhattan (or city-block) distance”, which expresses how close the two respective points are one from another in an n-dimensional space.
At the heart of euandi 2019 lies a series of political arguments – or issues - on which it is possible to take a position. For example, euandi 2019 offers to users to take a position regarding the statement "euthanasia should be legalised". Users can chose from the following answer categories: 'I completely agree', 'I tend to agree', 'I’m neutral', 'I tend to disagree' and 'I completely disagree'. Euandi 2019 also allows users to choose the option 'no opinion'.
For calculating the overlap, we first translated the answers given by the users into numbers, using the following key:
'I completely disagree' = 0,
'I tend to disagree' = 25,
'I am neutral' = 50,
“I tend to agree' = 75,
'I completely agree' = 100.
The same values were given to the positions taken up by the political parties. We then started off to calculate the distance (k) between the positions (P) of each user (i) and political party (e) on every statement (v). Expressed as an equation, this looks like this:
2. Calculation of Radar dimensions
Every statement can have some effect on one or more radar dimensions. The resultant effect is defined with values: 1 (positive polarity), -1 (negative polarity). Positive polarity means that only positive answers (50-100) increase the value and negative polarity means that only negative answers (0-50) increase the resulting value. Statements with polarity 0 are not included in a radar dimension calculation.
The resulting value regarding all answered questions (Sd) for a political party or user can vary from 0 to 100, where 100 means total agreement.
The following list documents how the 22 statements were grouped in order to lead to the scores for the seven radar’s dimensions.
LIBERAL SOCIETY
Asylum-seekers should be distributed proportionally among EU Member States (+)
Immigration [into your country] should be made more restrictive (-)
The legalisation of same sex marriages is a good thing (+)
The legalisation of the personal use of soft drugs is to be welcomed (+)
Euthanasia should be legalised (+)
Restrictions of personal privacy on the Internet should be accepted for public security reasons (-)
Criminals should be punished more severely (-)
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
The promotion of public transport should be fostered through green taxes (e.g. road taxing) (+)
Renewable sources of energy (e.g. solar or wind energy) should be supported even if this means higher energy costs (+)
EU INTEGRATION
The EU should rigorously punish Member States that violate the EU deficit rules (+)
Asylum-seekers should be distributed proportionally among EU Member States (+)
Social programmes should be maintained even at the cost of higher taxes (-)
The EU should acquire its own tax raising powers (+)
The European Union should strengthen its security and defence policy (+)
On foreign policy issues the EU should speak with one voice (+)
European integration is a good thing (+)
The single European currency (Euro) is a bad thing (-)
Individual member states of the EU should have less veto power (+)
In European Parliament elections, EU citizens should be allowed to cast a vote for a party or candidate from any other Member State (+)
ECONOMIC LIBERALISATION
Social programmes should be maintained even at the cost of higher taxes (-)
The state should provide stronger financial support to unemployed workers (-)
Government spending should be reduced in order to lower taxes (+)
The EU should acquire its own tax raising powers (-)
Bank and stock market gains should be taxed more heavily (-)
The promotion of public transport should be fostered through green taxes (e.g. road taxing) (-)
Renewable sources of energy (e.g. solar or wind energy) should be supported even if this means higher energy costs (-)
RESTRICTIVE FINANCIAL POLICY
Social programmes should be maintained even at the cost of higher taxes (-)
The state should provide stronger financial support to unemployed workers (-)
The EU should rigorously punish Member States that violate the EU deficit rules (+)
Government spending should be reduced in order to lower taxes (+)
The EU should acquire its own tax raising powers (-)
Bank and stock market gains should be taxed more heavily (+)
RESTRICTIVE IMMIGRATION POLICY
Immigration [into your country] should be made more restrictive (+)
Social programmes should be maintained even at the cost of higher taxes (+)
LAW AND ORDER
Immigration [into your country] should be made more restrictive (+)
The legalisation of the personal use of soft drugs is to be welcomed (-)
Euthanasia should be legalised (-)
Restrictions of personal privacy on the Internet should be accepted for public security reasons (+)
Criminals should be punished more severely (+)
In the calculation of the radar’s scores the weight (importance) of a statement for the user is not taken into account.
Users should be aware that the Radar serves as an illustrative tool that provides an overview of the political parties and their views.
3. Political Landscape
The political landscape is based on similar assumptions as the radar, but goes a step further. Namely, while the radar represents the political spectrum in seven different dimensions, the political landscape even further reduces the complexity of politics and offers only two major dimensions: an economic and a cultural one.
Both of these dimensions range from zero to one hundred. In order to determine the position of political parties and users in this two-dimensional space, we need to calculate their respective coordinates on the X and Y axes.
The initial position of a political party on an axis is 50% (neutral). Its position on an axis is calculated over all statements using the following formula:
The political landscape representation is based on the assumption that, in most political systems, citizens’ and political parties’ opinions on individual issues can be aggregated to a limited number of issue dimensions. In the graphical representation offered to the user, the position of parties (and of the user) on each axis is the average of all positions across issues pertaining to each dimension.
The computation of such averages, on each of the two axes, depends on a priori considerations, both in terms of which dimension an issue belongs to, and which side of the dimension a specific issue positions belongs to.
According to a structure of political attitudes common to most European countries, we have assigned the statements to each of the two dimensions according to the following table:
ECONOMIC DIMENSION: LEFT vs. RIGHT
Social programmes should be maintained even at the cost of higher taxes (left)
The state should provide stronger financial support to unemployed workers (left)
Government spending should be reduced in order to lower taxes (right)
Bank and stock market gains should be taxed more heavily (left)
The promotion of public transport should be fostered through green taxes (e.g. road taxing) (left)
Renewable sources of energy (e.g. solar or wind energy) should be supported even if this means higher energy costs (left)
CULTURAL DIMENSION: LIBERAL/PRO-EU vs. CONERVATIVE/ANTI-EU
The promotion of public transport should be fostered through green taxes (e.g. road taxing) (liberal/pro-EU)
Renewable sources of energy (e.g. solar or wind energy) should be supported even if this means higher energy costs (liberal/pro-EU)
The EU should rigorously punish Member States that violate the EU deficit rules (liberal/pro-EU)
Asylum-seekers should be distributed proportionally among EU Member States (liberal/pro-EU)
Immigration [into your country] should be made more restrictive (conservative/anti-EU)
Immigrants from outside Europe should be required to accept our culture and values (conservative/anti-EU)
The legalisation of same sex marriages is a good thing (liberal/pro-EU)
The legalisation of the personal use of soft drugs is to be welcomed (liberal/pro-EU)
Euthanasia should be legalised (liberal/pro-EU)
The EU should acquire its own tax raising powers (liberal/pro-EU)
Restrictions of personal privacy on the Internet should be accepted for public security reasons (conservative/anti-EU)
Criminals should be punished more severely (conservative/anti-EU)
The European Union should strengthen its security and defence policy (liberal/pro-EU)
On foreign policy issues the EU should speak with one voice (liberal/pro-EU)
European integration is a good thing (liberal/pro-EU)
The single European currency (Euro) is a bad thing (conservative/anti-EU)
Individual member states of the EU should have less veto power (liberal/pro-EU)
In European Parliament elections, EU citizens should be allowed to cast a vote for a party or candidate from any other Member State (liberal/pro-EU)
Both the position of the user and the position of parties are presented to the viewer as points in a two-dimensional space. Please note that:
- this calculation method does not take the saliency of separate issues into account, and there is no party-specific weighting of the issues for each of the parties;
- this visualisation does not influence the “Party match” result, it is only an independent attractive visual positioning of party and voter profiles;
- while the great majority of statements only concerns one single dimension, two statements affect two dimensions simultaneously (see table above).
4. Calculating the nearest political party in Europe
Users have the additional possibility of matching their views with all the political parties included in euandi 2019 in two ways: first, they can consult a list of party matches grouped by countries. Second, they can simply consult the full list of party matches. The calculation method for these Europe-wide visualisations is identical to the overlap calculations of the nearest party (see section 1 above).
Euandi 2019 shows the overlap between the political parties’ positions and the user's preferences. In order to simplify the interpretation of the results, the latter are expressed in terms of a percentage of overlap. 0% indicates that a political party and a user’s preferences do not overlap at all, 100% indicates that they completely overlap.
Technically, for calculating a user’s closest candidate, we use the so called “Manhattan (or city-block) distance”, which expresses how close the two respective points are one from another in an n-dimensional space.
At the heart of euandi 2019 lies a series of political arguments – or issues - on which it is possible to take a position. For example, euandi 2019 offers to users to take a position regarding the statement "euthanasia should be legalised". Users can chose from the following answer categories: 'I completely agree', 'I tend to agree', 'I’m neutral', 'I tend to disagree' and 'I completely disagree'. Euandi 2019 also allows users to choose the option 'no opinion'.
For calculating the overlap, we first translated the answers given by the users into numbers, using the following key:
'I completely disagree' = 0,
'I tend to disagree' = 25,
'I am neutral' = 50,
“I tend to agree' = 75,
'I completely agree' = 100.
The same values were given to the positions taken up by the political parties. We then started off to calculate the distance (k) between the positions (P) of each user (i) and political party (e) on every statement (v). Expressed as an equation, this looks like this:
2. Calculation of Radar dimensions
Every statement can have some effect on one or more radar dimensions. The resultant effect is defined with values: 1 (positive polarity), -1 (negative polarity). Positive polarity means that only positive answers (50-100) increase the value and negative polarity means that only negative answers (0-50) increase the resulting value. Statements with polarity 0 are not included in a radar dimension calculation.
The resulting value regarding all answered questions (Sd) for a political party or user can vary from 0 to 100, where 100 means total agreement.
where
and
The following list documents how the 22 statements were grouped in order to lead to the scores for the seven radar’s dimensions.
LIBERAL SOCIETY
Asylum-seekers should be distributed proportionally among EU Member States (+)
Immigration [into your country] should be made more restrictive (-)
The legalisation of same sex marriages is a good thing (+)
The legalisation of the personal use of soft drugs is to be welcomed (+)
Euthanasia should be legalised (+)
Restrictions of personal privacy on the Internet should be accepted for public security reasons (-)
Criminals should be punished more severely (-)
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
The promotion of public transport should be fostered through green taxes (e.g. road taxing) (+)
Renewable sources of energy (e.g. solar or wind energy) should be supported even if this means higher energy costs (+)
EU INTEGRATION
The EU should rigorously punish Member States that violate the EU deficit rules (+)
Asylum-seekers should be distributed proportionally among EU Member States (+)
Social programmes should be maintained even at the cost of higher taxes (-)
The EU should acquire its own tax raising powers (+)
The European Union should strengthen its security and defence policy (+)
On foreign policy issues the EU should speak with one voice (+)
European integration is a good thing (+)
The single European currency (Euro) is a bad thing (-)
Individual member states of the EU should have less veto power (+)
In European Parliament elections, EU citizens should be allowed to cast a vote for a party or candidate from any other Member State (+)
ECONOMIC LIBERALISATION
Social programmes should be maintained even at the cost of higher taxes (-)
The state should provide stronger financial support to unemployed workers (-)
Government spending should be reduced in order to lower taxes (+)
The EU should acquire its own tax raising powers (-)
Bank and stock market gains should be taxed more heavily (-)
The promotion of public transport should be fostered through green taxes (e.g. road taxing) (-)
Renewable sources of energy (e.g. solar or wind energy) should be supported even if this means higher energy costs (-)
RESTRICTIVE FINANCIAL POLICY
Social programmes should be maintained even at the cost of higher taxes (-)
The state should provide stronger financial support to unemployed workers (-)
The EU should rigorously punish Member States that violate the EU deficit rules (+)
Government spending should be reduced in order to lower taxes (+)
The EU should acquire its own tax raising powers (-)
Bank and stock market gains should be taxed more heavily (+)
RESTRICTIVE IMMIGRATION POLICY
Immigration [into your country] should be made more restrictive (+)
Social programmes should be maintained even at the cost of higher taxes (+)
LAW AND ORDER
Immigration [into your country] should be made more restrictive (+)
The legalisation of the personal use of soft drugs is to be welcomed (-)
Euthanasia should be legalised (-)
Restrictions of personal privacy on the Internet should be accepted for public security reasons (+)
Criminals should be punished more severely (+)
In the calculation of the radar’s scores the weight (importance) of a statement for the user is not taken into account.
Users should be aware that the Radar serves as an illustrative tool that provides an overview of the political parties and their views.
3. Political Landscape
The political landscape is based on similar assumptions as the radar, but goes a step further. Namely, while the radar represents the political spectrum in seven different dimensions, the political landscape even further reduces the complexity of politics and offers only two major dimensions: an economic and a cultural one.
Both of these dimensions range from zero to one hundred. In order to determine the position of political parties and users in this two-dimensional space, we need to calculate their respective coordinates on the X and Y axes.
The initial position of a political party on an axis is 50% (neutral). Its position on an axis is calculated over all statements using the following formula:
The political landscape representation is based on the assumption that, in most political systems, citizens’ and political parties’ opinions on individual issues can be aggregated to a limited number of issue dimensions. In the graphical representation offered to the user, the position of parties (and of the user) on each axis is the average of all positions across issues pertaining to each dimension.
The computation of such averages, on each of the two axes, depends on a priori considerations, both in terms of which dimension an issue belongs to, and which side of the dimension a specific issue positions belongs to.
According to a structure of political attitudes common to most European countries, we have assigned the statements to each of the two dimensions according to the following table:
ECONOMIC DIMENSION: LEFT vs. RIGHT
Social programmes should be maintained even at the cost of higher taxes (left)
The state should provide stronger financial support to unemployed workers (left)
Government spending should be reduced in order to lower taxes (right)
Bank and stock market gains should be taxed more heavily (left)
The promotion of public transport should be fostered through green taxes (e.g. road taxing) (left)
Renewable sources of energy (e.g. solar or wind energy) should be supported even if this means higher energy costs (left)
CULTURAL DIMENSION: LIBERAL/PRO-EU vs. CONERVATIVE/ANTI-EU
The promotion of public transport should be fostered through green taxes (e.g. road taxing) (liberal/pro-EU)
Renewable sources of energy (e.g. solar or wind energy) should be supported even if this means higher energy costs (liberal/pro-EU)
The EU should rigorously punish Member States that violate the EU deficit rules (liberal/pro-EU)
Asylum-seekers should be distributed proportionally among EU Member States (liberal/pro-EU)
Immigration [into your country] should be made more restrictive (conservative/anti-EU)
Immigrants from outside Europe should be required to accept our culture and values (conservative/anti-EU)
The legalisation of same sex marriages is a good thing (liberal/pro-EU)
The legalisation of the personal use of soft drugs is to be welcomed (liberal/pro-EU)
Euthanasia should be legalised (liberal/pro-EU)
The EU should acquire its own tax raising powers (liberal/pro-EU)
Restrictions of personal privacy on the Internet should be accepted for public security reasons (conservative/anti-EU)
Criminals should be punished more severely (conservative/anti-EU)
The European Union should strengthen its security and defence policy (liberal/pro-EU)
On foreign policy issues the EU should speak with one voice (liberal/pro-EU)
European integration is a good thing (liberal/pro-EU)
The single European currency (Euro) is a bad thing (conservative/anti-EU)
Individual member states of the EU should have less veto power (liberal/pro-EU)
In European Parliament elections, EU citizens should be allowed to cast a vote for a party or candidate from any other Member State (liberal/pro-EU)
Both the position of the user and the position of parties are presented to the viewer as points in a two-dimensional space. Please note that:
- this calculation method does not take the saliency of separate issues into account, and there is no party-specific weighting of the issues for each of the parties;
- this visualisation does not influence the “Party match” result, it is only an independent attractive visual positioning of party and voter profiles;
- while the great majority of statements only concerns one single dimension, two statements affect two dimensions simultaneously (see table above).
4. Calculating the nearest political party in Europe
Users have the additional possibility of matching their views with all the political parties included in euandi 2019 in two ways: first, they can consult a list of party matches grouped by countries. Second, they can simply consult the full list of party matches. The calculation method for these Europe-wide visualisations is identical to the overlap calculations of the nearest party (see section 1 above).