Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Mapping the Political Landscape: A Vote Advice Application in Portugal

2010; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.2139/ssrn.1695007

1556-5068

Marina Costa Lobo, Maarten Vink, Marco Lisi,

Social Media and Politics

On Sunday, 27 September 2009, Portugal held general elections for the Assembleia da República, the unicameral national parliament. We developed a Vote Advice Application for Portugal – Bússola Eleitoral ('electoral compass') – that was launched online on 20 August 2009, five weeks before the general elections. It contained 28 questions that users could answer to and then compare their ideological position with the position of 12 political parties participating in the elections. By Election Day, more than 350 thousand visits to visits to the Bússola Eleitoral website were registered. Of these, around 175 thousand consisted of active user sessions that lasted on average more than fifteen minutes. In this paper we provide information about the development of the Bússola Eleitoral, particularly with regard to statement selection and calibration of parties. Second, we discuss the extent to which the Bússola presents a realistic picture of the Portuguese ideological landscape. Third, we present descriptive statistics about the users of the Bússola and conclude by discussing the extent to which these data help us understand electoral behaviour in Portugal.