Keywords: political ideology, political alignment, international surveys, left-right, progressive-conservative

Pew Research Center has measured political ideology on international surveys using a left-right scale for many years. Ideology is a valuable analytical tool to group respondents across countries by shared beliefs. However, the left-right construct is not applicable to each country, and we have been unable to measure political alignment in all countries.

To help bridge this gap in measurement, we made two modifications to our annual Global Attitudes Survey, fielded in spring 2024. First, we asked our usual seven-point left-right scale for the first time in Nigeria, South Africa, the Philippines and Turkey. We also tested a new measure which used progressive-conservative language on the same seven-point scale and was fielded in four countries where the left-right construct was not appropriate: Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. In total, this analysis draws on nationally representative surveys of adults in nearly 30 countries, conducted over the phone or face-to-face, depending on the country.

This paper uses the results of this survey to explore how each ideology measure maps to attitudes toward political parties in each country. It also examines the reliability of ideology as an indicator of party affiliation and how that varies by country and ideology measure. Additionally, the paper analyzes how self-placement on the left-right and progressive-conservative scales is related to important social and political beliefs, such as views of the economic system and social inequality in each country.

These findings offer insight into how political alignment is conceptualized across countries and how it can best be measured in survey research.