Compare methods

	Feeling Thermometer Analysis	Political Ideology Scale
Field	Political Psychology	Political Psychology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1964	1990
Originator	American National Election Studies / Aage Clausen	Hans-Dieter Klingemann & Norberto Bobbio
Type	Affect rating instrument	Self-report
Seminal source	Wilcox, C., Sigelman, L., & Cook, E. (1989). Some like it hot: Individual differences in responses to group feeling thermometers. Public Opinion Quarterly, 53(2), 246-257.	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	Feeling Thermometer, Affect Thermometer, Thermometer Rating Scale	Left-Right Scale, Ideology Continuum, Political Spectrum Scale
Related	4	3
Summary	The feeling thermometer is a survey instrument that asks respondents to rate their warmth or favorability toward a person, group, or institution on a 0-to-100 scale, where 0 is very cold/unfavorable, 100 is very warm/favorable, and 50 is neutral. Introduced in the American National Election Studies in the 1960s, it is the standard measure of political affect, and its analysis underpins candidate evaluation, group affect, and affective-polarization research.	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.