Why automated coding of party positions from manifestos may produce misleading conclusions in political research

One of the more challenging tasks in political research is to produce reliable information on how political parties compare with one another on key issues like their approach to the economy or immigration.

As Didier Ruedin writes, some researchers have sought to perform this task using automated methods that classify a party’s approach to an issue by scanning the content of their manifesto. However, he illustrates that while such methods can be efficient in terms of the time taken to carry out the research, they can often produce misleading conclusions.