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Abstract:
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.
