The country ideology would be the typical ideology in a country or the ideological center of gravity, which measures the left-right scale taking into account the size of the parties (which would be the vote share of the party in a election). With our model it's possible to predict that metrics with only data retrieved from Facebook. The left and right ideology are also included, that is the same metric but only if the 25% more leftwing or 25% more rigthwing votes are taken in consideration.

Polarization is measured with a metric proposed by Dalton, that gives a metric of how spread are the political parties in a country by their position in the left right scale and size. This scale also range between 0 and 10, with 0 meaning that all parties are in the same ideological point, and 10 meaning the parties are split in the extremes of the left-right scale.

The metrics are computed twice each month, using regression models. For any of the metrics we include the predicted value, and the EWMA value (Exponentially Weighted Moving Average), which allows to see the evolution more clearly.

All the information regarding how we built the models can be found in the paper: "Estimating ideology and polarization in European countries using Facebook data": Access the paper

Visit the Ideology & Polarization dashboard to explore the ideology and polarization of the different countries across Europe.