Compare methods

	Affective Polarization Measurement	Political Ideology Scale
Field	Political Psychology	Political Psychology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2012	1990
Originator	Shanto Iyengar, Gaurav Sood & Yphtach Lelkes	Hans-Dieter Klingemann & Norberto Bobbio
Type	Composite survey index	Self-report
Seminal source	Iyengar, S., Sood, G., & Lelkes, Y. (2012). Affect, not ideology: A social identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(3), 405-431.	Fuchs, D., & Klingemann, H. D. (1990). The left-right schema. In M. Kent Jennings & Jan W. Van Deth (Eds.), Continuities in political action. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Aliases	Affective Polarization Index, Partisan Affect Gap, Thermometer Difference Measure	Left-Right Scale, Ideology Continuum, Political Spectrum Scale
Related	4	3
Summary	Affective polarization measurement quantifies the gap between how positively people feel toward their own political party (the in-party) and how negatively they feel toward the opposing party (the out-party). Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes (2012) showed that this affective divide has grown sharply even where issue positions have not, reframing polarization as a social-identity phenomenon of partisan like and dislike rather than ideological distance.	The Political Ideology Scale measures individual self-placement on a left-right political spectrum, capturing fundamental preferences for government role, economic organization, and social values. The single-item self-placement measure (most common) asks respondents to rate themselves on a 0-10 or 0-100 continuum; multi-item versions assess distinct ideological dimensions (economic policy, social policy, nationalism). The left-right axis remains the dominant organizing principle of political competition globally, predicting party choice, policy preferences, and electoral behavior despite critiques that it oversimplifies multidimensional political space.