Replication Data for: Estimating Uncertainty in Party Policy Positions Using the Confrontational Approach

This research note extends the confrontational approach to estimating party policy positions by providing a way to estimate uncertainty associated with the measurements. The confrontational approach is a flexible method of determining party policy positions which is ideally suited to measure parties’ positions on issues that are specific to a country orperiod in time. We introduce a method of estimating the uncertainty of confrontational estimates by restating the approach as a special case of an Item Response Theory (IRT), opening up the possibility of using the confrontational approach not only as a descriptive tool, but also as a means of testing hypotheses on party policy preferences. We illustrate our model using analysis of the 2010 Dutch parliamentary election and the 2009 European elections.