IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_4631.html

Analysing Party Preferences Using Google Trends

Author

Listed:
  • Mirko Seithe
  • Lena Calahorrano

Abstract

The formation of party preferences is a complex and not yet fully understood process based on a number of factors. This process, which is of great interest for both social and political science, is usually studied using questionnaire data which has proven to be a very reliable yet often costly and limited approach. Advances in technology and the rise of the internet as a primary information source for many people have created a new approach to keep track of people’s interests. The major gateways to the internet’s information are the so-called search engines, and Google, arguably the most commonly used search engine, allows scientists to tap the vast source of information generated by its users’ search queries. In this paper we describe how this data source can be used to estimate the effect of different issues on party preferences using German voters and the German party system as an example. We find that using data provided by Google Trends can lead to a variety of interesting and occasionally counter-intuitive insights into peoples’ party preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Mirko Seithe & Lena Calahorrano, 2014. "Analysing Party Preferences Using Google Trends," CESifo Working Paper Series 4631, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4631
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4631.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leifeld, Philip, 2013. "texreg: Conversion of Statistical Model Output in R to LATEX and HTML Tables," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 55(i08).
    2. Logan Dancey & Paul Goren, 2010. "Party Identification, Issue Attitudes, and the Dynamics of Political Debate," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 686-699, July.
    3. Ingo Geishecker & Thomas Siedler, 2012. "Job Loss Fears and (Extremist) Party Identification: First Evidence from Panel Data," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 511, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    4. Hyunyoung Choi & Hal Varian, 2012. "Predicting the Present with Google Trends," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(s1), pages 2-9, June.
    5. Zeileis, Achim & Grothendieck, Gabor, 2005. "zoo: S3 Infrastructure for Regular and Irregular Time Series," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 14(i06).
    6. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    7. repec:diw:diwwpp:dp899 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Zeileis, Achim, 2004. "Econometric Computing with HC and HAC Covariance Matrix Estimators," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 11(i10).
    9. Henningsen, Arne & Hamann, Jeff D., 2007. "systemfit: A Package for Estimating Systems of Simultaneous Equations in R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 23(i04).
    10. Rabinowitz, George & Macdonald, Stuart Elaine, 1989. "A Directional Theory of Issue Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(1), pages 93-121, March.
    11. Thomas M. Carsey & Geoffrey C. Layman, 2006. "Changing Sides or Changing Minds? Party Identification and Policy Preferences in the American Electorate," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(2), pages 464-477, April.
    12. Geys, Benny & Vermeir, Jan, 2008. "The political cost of taxation: new evidence from German popularity ratings [Besteuerung und Popularität von Politikern: Neue Ergebnisse für die Deutsche Bundesregierung 1978-2003]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2008-06, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Calahorrano, Lena & Seithe, Mirko, 2014. "Analysing Party Preferences Using Google Trends," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100294, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Holger Reinermann, 2022. "Party competition and the structuring of party preferences by the left-right dimension," Rationality and Society, , vol. 34(2), pages 185-217, May.
    3. Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde & João V. Ferreira, 2020. "Conflicted voters: A spatial voting model with multiple party identifications," Post-Print hal-02909682, HAL.
    4. Anja Neundorf & James Adams, 2014. "The Micro-foundation of Party Competition and Issue Ownership: The Reciprocal Effects of Citizens' Issue Salience and Party Attachments," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 692, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    5. Francisco Martínez-Mora & M. Socorro Puy, 2009. "Off-the-peak preferences over government size," Working Papers 2009-9, Universidad de Málaga, Department of Economic Theory, Málaga Economic Theory Research Center.
    6. Mikael Gilljam, 1997. "Symposium. The Directional Theory of Issue Voting: I," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 9(1), pages 5-12, January.
    7. Michal Tóth & Roman Chytilek, 2018. "Fast, frugal and correct? An experimental study on the influence of time scarcity and quantity of information on the voter decision making process," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 67-86, October.
    8. Enriqueta Aragonès & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2017. "Imperfectly Informed Voters And Strategic Extremism," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(2), pages 439-471, May.
    9. Sunn Bush, Sarah & Cottiero, Christina & Prather, Lauren, 2024. "Zombies Ahead: Explaining the Rise of Low-Quality Election Monitoring," Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Working Paper Series qt2fc2d3pr, Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California.
    10. Martínez-Mora, Francisco & Puy, M. Socorro, 2014. "The determinants and electoral consequences of asymmetric preferences," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 85-97.
    11. repec:grz:wpsses:2021-03 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Kleiber Christian & Zeileis Achim, 2010. "The Grunfeld Data at 50," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 11(4), pages 404-417, December.
    13. Emily Clough, 2008. "Still Converging? a Downsian Party System Without Polls," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 20(4), pages 461-476, October.
    14. Stübinger, Johannes & Endres, Sylvia, 2017. "Pairs trading with a mean-reverting jump-diffusion model on high-frequency data," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 10/2017, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    15. Melvin J. Hinich & Michael C. Munger, 1992. "A Spatial Theory of Ideology," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 4(1), pages 5-30, January.
    16. Mostapha Diss & Eric Kamwa, 2019. "Simulations in Models of Preference Aggregation," Working Papers hal-02424936, HAL.
    17. Robert E. Hogan, 2008. "Policy Responsiveness and Incumbent Reelection in State Legislatures," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 858-873, October.
    18. Robert Grafstein, 2018. "The problem of polarization," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 315-340, July.
    19. Irem Batool & Gernot Sieg, 2009. "Bread and the attrition of power: Economic events and German election results," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(1), pages 151-165, October.
    20. repec:bla:germec:v:11:y:2010:i::p:404-417 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Merl, Robert & Stöckl, Thomas & Palan, Stefan, 2023. "Insider trading regulation and shorting constraints. Evaluating the joint effects of two market interventions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    22. Marc van de Wardt & Joost Berkhout & Floris Vermeulen, 2017. "Ecologies of ideologies: Explaining party entry and exit in West-European parliaments, 1945–2013," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(2), pages 239-259, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4631. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.