The Instability of Partisanship: An Analysis of the 1980 Presidential Election

1988 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Brody ◽  
Lawrence S. Rothenberg

Scholars have long assigned a key role to party identification as an explanation of voting behaviour. In doing so, they have assumed that individuals' partisan affiliations remain unchanged for long periods of time. But is partisanship sufficiently stable to justify this assumption? At the very least, to be considered a long-term force party identification cannot change during an election. Yet the intra-election stability of party affiliations has been accepted on faith, rather than examined empirically.Our analysis tests this assumption by looking at the evolution of partisanship over the course of the 1980 election. We find that many citizens do alter their partisanship over a single electoral period. These changes in party identification follow a systematic - and not a random - pattern. Both cognitive and affective factors account for this intra-election partisan lability. These findings suggest that much of the previous research on voting behaviour has been seriously misspecified.

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
RODERIC AI CAMP

AbstractThe 2012 presidential election in Mexico is significant for many reasons, not least of which is that it returned the Partido Revolucionario Institucional to power after two Partido Acción Nacional administrations. This essay reviews more than 50 surveys taken before and during the election to determine significant patterns among Mexican voters, comparing the most influential traditional and non-traditional demographic variables, as well as other variables such as partisanship and policy issues in this election, with those of the two previous presidential races. It also analyses other influential variables in the 2012 presidential race, including social media and the application of new electoral legislation. It identifies significant differences and similarities among voters today in contrast to the two prior elections, and suggests long-term patterns among Mexican voters which are likely to influence voting behaviour in future elections, ranging from regionalism and gender to partisanship and social media.


Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo

States are more likely to engage in risky and destabilizing actions such as military build-ups and preemptive strikes if they believe their adversaries pose a tangible threat. Yet despite the crucial importance of this issue, we don’t know enough about how states and their leaders draw inferences about their adversaries’ long-term intentions. This book draws on a wealth of historical archival evidence to shed new light on how world leaders and intelligence organizations actually make these intentions assessments. The book examines three cases: Britain’s assessments of Nazi Germany’s intentions in the 1930s, America’s assessments of the Soviet Union’s intentions during the Carter administration, and the Reagan administration’s assessments of Soviet intentions near the end of the Cold War. The book advances a new theoretical framework—called selective attention—that emphasizes organizational dynamics, personal diplomatic interactions, and cognitive and affective factors. It finds that decision makers don’t pay as much attention to those aspects of state behavior that major theories of international politics claim they do. Instead, they tend to determine the intentions of adversaries on the basis of preexisting beliefs, theories, and personal impressions. The book also shows how intelligence organizations rely on very different indicators than decision makers, focusing more on changes in the military capabilities of adversaries. The book provides a clearer picture of the historical validity of existing theories, and broadens our understanding of the important role that diplomacy plays in international security.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Hawley

AbstractPrior to the 2012 presidential election, some commentators speculated that Mitt Romney's status as a devout and active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would undermine his presidential aspirations. Using the 2012 American National Election Survey, this study examines the relationship between attitudes toward Mormons and voter behavior in the United States in that election year. It finds that attitudes toward Mormons had a statistically-significant effect on turnout — though these effects differed according to party identification. It additionally finds that these attitudes influenced vote choice. In both cases, the substantive effects were small, indicating that anti-Mormon feelings did play a role in the 2012 presidential election, but they did not determine the final outcome.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuguang Zhao ◽  
Yiming Liu

This study examines the relationship between cognitive and affective factors and people's information-seeking and -avoiding behaviours in acute risks with a 1,946-sample online survey conducted in February 2020, during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that perceived information insufficiency correlates negatively with information-seeking behaviour and there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between information insufficiency and avoidance behaviour. As for the risk-related cognitive factors, information seeking increases as perceived severity of risks rises, while information avoiding increases as perceived susceptibility rises. Perceived response efficacy positively correlates with information-seeking and negatively with information-avoidance behaviours. Preliminary results also indicated that different affective factors relate to information-seeking and avoidance behaviours differently.


1989 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mundy ◽  
Marian Sigman

AbstractThis article presents our response to the comments of Baron-Cohen, Harris, Hobson, and Leslie and Happé. We suggest that a singular cognitive hypothesis does not provide a parsimonious explanation of autism. We argue that certain aspects of autism, including observations of joint-attention deficits and observations of deficits in the prosodic elements of speech, may best be explained in terms of both cognitive and affective factors. We also acknowledge the validity of the criticism of our contingency processing deficit hypothesis (Mundy & Sigman, 1989a). In response to this criticism, we offer a modification of our model of joint-attention skill deficits in autistic children.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Hamid Ashraf ◽  
Aynaz Samir ◽  
Mona T. Yazdi

<p>The aim of the present study was to find the reflection factors at which Iranian EFL teachers reflect on their teaching practice. To this end, 18 Iranian EFL teachers at several language institutes participated in this research. Teachers were surveyed using in-depth interview. The results of study indicated that Iranian EFL teachers were practicing four underlying factors of reflection in their teaching including: practical, cognitive, meta-cognitive, and affective factors. Obviously, the practice of reflective teaching improves the quality of teaching practice and increases students’ motivation towards language learning in classroom. The results call for paying further notice to important role of theses reflective teachers in Iranian EFL context and there is a need to raise knowledge and awareness of all language teachers of the importance of reflecting on their teaching practice.</p>


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