ELECTORAL COMPASS 2020

This analytical report presents the results of research of political orientation of political parties and voters in Serbia in the period preceding parliamentary elections held in the spring of 2020. The analysis is based on data gathered through implementation of complex methodology set created by Netherlands based company Kieskompas. Kieskompas.nl is a Voting Advice Application (VAA) that was first developed for the 2006 Dutch parliamentary election using a novel approach to calibrate political parties on salient issues and issue dimensions by analyzing their official policy documentation. Electoral Compass, as it is named in Serbia, is not an electoral forecasting tool. It is rather a political advisory instrument that at the same time collects data about political parties’ and voters’ political orientation and preferences. The methodology produces a double axes political diagram in which political parties are positioned--the vertical ‘social-cultural’ axis distinguishing conservative and progressive orientations at its poles and the horizontal ‘economic’ axis distinguishing between leftist and rightist orientation. After completing a questionnaire, which was done by 36,099 people in Serbia. Voters can see which party they are closest to and thus discover their political preferences as well as their deeper ideological orientation. Based on this, researchers who manage the application can later analyze the way in which political parties make groupings in the political space on one hand and where voters are located in the same political space on the other. This way the proximity between each voter and each party can also be calculated.