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The Real (Lack of) Difference between Republicans and Democrats: A ComputerWord Score Analysis of Party Platforms, 1996–2004

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2008

Quentin Kidd
Quentin Kidd
Affiliation:
Christopher Newport University
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Extract

For years voters and political pundits have grumbled about the lack of real choice betweenRepublicans and Democrats. Scholars have examined party behavior and suggested reasons forconcern. Determining whether there is a real ideological and policy difference between U.S.political parties, and the nature of that difference, is important for political science andfor democratic politics generally. Ultimately, democracy is about choices, and where choicesare few, democracy is degraded. One way to examine the choices that political parties offervoters is by assessing their political platforms. Even in an era of candidate-centricpolitics, political party platforms spell out the general programs offered by the parties,and the platforms are heavily influenced by the policy positions of the candidatesthemselves. In addition, the political platform is the one document that spells out theentire program of the party. Individual candidate speeches capture only snippets (at best)of the policy choices offered to voters. Recent innovations in computerized content analysismake it possible to analyze large bodies of text such as party platforms in a systematic wayby treating words as data, then analyzing them statistically.

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PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 519 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 2008

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