Party Identification, Political Behavior, and the American Electorate.Sheldon Kamieniecki

1986 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 512-515
Author(s):  
Mack Shelley
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Party Identification

scholarly journals Question Order and Multidimensionality of Partisanship

1993 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 501-514
Author(s):  
Michael A. Maggiotto ◽  
Gary D. Wekkin
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Order Effects ◽  
Contrast Effects ◽  
National State ◽  
Question Order ◽  
Special Concern ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Partisan Identification

The recognition of question-order problems has prompted a reexamination of theory and data in several areas of political behavior. The possibility of question-order effects is of special concern to the study of party identification, the original conceptualization of which has been criticized for disregarding multi dimensionality. We have yet to discover whether the sequence and/or proximity of items measuring multiple, related dimensions may influence findings. An area of research in which results may be especially susceptible to reactivity is that of multiple partisan identification. Most of the studies in this literature asked respondents a context-differentiated sequence of items about their partisan identification in national and state and (infrequently) local politics, respectively, separated only by the usual probes for intensity and direction. The responses obtained logically risk contamination by either consistency or contrast effects, as well as by salience or frame-of-reference effects generated by intervening or antecedent, nonrecursively-related items. In this study, we report the results of two experiments used to control for potential question-order effects in the measurement of multiple party identification. In the first, national and state partisan identification items were alternated in sequence in order to test whether responses to national partisan identification items structure responses to state (and local) partisan identification items. In the second, party thermometer items, national, state, and local partisan identification items, and national, state, and local retrospective evaluations of party governing performance were rotated sequentially. Generally, responses to these three measures of partisanship did not differ significantly as the order of appearance changed.

The Dynamics of Party Identification

1983 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 957-973 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Franklin ◽  
John E. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Electoral Process ◽  
Issue Voting ◽  
Hierarchical Relationship ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Relative Proximity ◽  
Voting Models ◽  
Development And Evolution

This article presents a model of individuals' party identification that contrasts with previous models. Past models, with the few recent exceptions noted, assume a hierarchical relationship either from identification to other aspects of political behavior, such as the perception and evaluation of issues and candidates, or from these behaviors to party identifications. The model discussed here places party within a dynamic concept of the electoral process and tests several hypotheses about factors producing changes in identifications. The first factor, consistent with the spatial-type issue voting models, estimates the effects of the relative proximity of each party to the individual's own policy preferences. Second, we examine the effect of the actual voting decision on subsequent identifications, with the expectation that if votes differ from previous identifications, there is a resulting shift in partisanship. Finally, we examine the hypothesis that identifications become less susceptible to change as people age and accumulate political experience. When combined with other research, the results indicate a model of the electoral process in which party identifications are both influenced by circumstances specific to each election and influence other behaviors. This nonrecursive model has a number of implications for the development and evolution of individual and aggregate partisanship. These implications are discussed at the end of the article.

Expressive Partisanship: Campaign Involvement, Political Emotion, and Partisan Identity

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
LEONIE HUDDY ◽  
LILLIANA MASON ◽  
LENE AARØE
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Campaign Activity ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Partisan Identity ◽  
Ideological Identity

Party identification is central to the study of American political behavior, yet there remains disagreement over whether it is largely instrumental or expressive in nature. We draw on social identity theory to develop the expressive model and conduct four studies to compare it to an instrumental explanation of campaign involvement. We find strong support for the expressive model: a multi-item partisan identity scale better accounts for campaign activity than a strong stance on subjectively important policy issues, the strength of ideological self-placement, or a measure of ideological identity. A series of experiments underscore the power of partisan identity to generate action-oriented emotions that drive campaign activity. Strongly identified partisans feel angrier than weaker partisans when threatened with electoral loss and more positive when reassured of victory. In contrast, those who hold a strong and ideologically consistent position on issues are no more aroused emotionally than others by party threats or reassurances. In addition, threat and reassurance to the party's status arouse greater anger and enthusiasm among partisans than does a threatened loss or victory on central policy issues. Our findings underscore the power of an expressive partisan identity to drive campaign involvement and generate strong emotional reactions to ongoing campaign events.

Japan's Habitual Voters

1986 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRADLEY M. RICHARDSON
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Strong Tendency ◽  
Behavior Theories ◽  
New Type ◽  
Negative Feelings ◽  
Comparative Political Behavior

Party identification has been shown to be comparatively weak and volatile in Japan. A search for alternative elements of continuity in partisan behavior indicates that many Japanese vote regularly for the same party, and for roughly one-fifth of the electorate this is done in the absence of a stable party identification. Following earlier work by Ivor Crewe, these nonidentifiers who still vote regularly for the same party are termed habitual voters. Habitual voters are less involved in issues, have fewer party images and have fewer ties to external groups that support their party than stable party identifiers. What makes the habitual voters stand out most is their absence of emotional commitments to the party they vote for regularly in elections and lack of negative feelings toward the parties they do not support. Habitual voting thus reflects one of the dominant traits of Japan's political culture, which is a strong tendency toward affective neutrality. Habitual voters are a new type of nonaffective partisan not anticipated in traditional political behavior theories, and as such their presence in Japan should be of interest to students of comparative political behavior.

The Gun Gap

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R. Joslyn
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
Behavioral Differences ◽  
Voter Choice ◽  
Education Gaps ◽  
Conventional Models ◽  
Modern Mass

To understand public opinion and political behavior, researchers typically sort people by self-identified groupings such as party identification, race, gender, education, and income. This book advances gun owners as a new classification. It demonstrates a “gun gap,” which captures the differences between gun owners and nonowners, and shows how this gap improves conventional models of political behavior. The gun gap in fact represents an important explanation for voter choice, voter turnout, perceptions of personal and public safety, preferences for gun control policies, and support for the death penalty. Moreover, the gun gap is growing. During the 1970s and 1980s, it was small. However, legislative battles over guns in the early 1990s marked a significant growth in the gun gap that continues to this day. The 2016 presidential election witnessed the largest recorded gun gap in history. The gun gap in voter choice was nearly three times larger in 2016 than the gender gap, and it exceeded age and education gaps by notable margins. This book also focuses on variation among gun owners. Gun owners are not a monolith but exhibit attitudinal and behavioral differences that can be as large as the gap between gun owners and nonowners. The gun gap thus affords a new and compelling vantage point to evaluate modern mass politics.

Party Identification and Its Implications

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
The United States ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Average Person ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
Cross National

Early electoral research in the United States discovered the most important concept in the study of political behavior: party identification. Party identification is a long-term, affective attachment to one’s preferred political party. Cross-national research finds that these party identities are a potent cue in guiding the attitudes and behavior of the average person. Partisans tend to repeatedly support their preferred party, even when the candidates and the issues change. Party ties mobilize people to vote to support their party, and to work for the party during the campaign. And given the limited information most people have about complex political issues, party ties provide a cue to what positions one should support. The levels of partisanship among contemporary publics, and how it varies across nations and across time, are described. The implications of these patterns, and the current research debates on the significance of partisanship for democracies today, are discussed.

Perceptions of political leaders

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-79
Author(s):  
J. David Schmitz ◽  
Gregg R. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Group Behavior ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The World ◽  
Physical Stature ◽  
Partisan Identification ◽  
Political Decisions

Partisan identification is a fundamental force in individual and mass political behavior around the world. Informed by scholarship on human sociality, coalitional psychology, and group behavior, this research argues that partisan identification, like many other group-based behaviors, is influenced by forces of evolution. If correct, then party identifiers should exhibit adaptive behaviors when making group-related political decisions. The authors test this assertion with citizen assessments of the relative physical formidability of competing leaders, an important adaptive factor in leader evaluations. Using original and novel data collected during the contextually different 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections, as well as two distinct measures obtained during both elections, this article presents evidence that partisans overestimate the physical stature of the presidential candidate of their own party compared with the stature of the candidate of the opposition party. These findings suggest that the power of party identification on political behavior may be attributable to the fact that modern political parties address problems similar to the problems groups faced in human ancestral times.

Party Identification, Political Behavior, and the American Electorate.

1986 ◽  
Vol 101 (3) ◽  
pp. 482
Author(s):  
Eric R. A. N. Smith ◽  
Sheldon Kamieniecki
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Party Identification

The Dynamics of the Partisan Gender Gap

2004 ◽  
Vol 98 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
JANET M. BOX-STEFFENSMEIER ◽  
SUZANNA DE BOEF ◽  
TSE-MIN LIN
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Single Women ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Time Series Approach

Gender differences in vote choice, opinion, and party identification have become a common feature of the American political landscape. We examine the nature and causes of gender differences in partisanship using a time series approach. We show that gender differences are pervasive—existing outside of the context of specific elections or issues—and that they are a product of the interaction of societal conditions and politics. We find that from 1979 to 2000, the partisan gender gap has grown when the political climate moved in a conservative direction, the economy deteriorated, and the percentage of economically vulnerable, single women increased. The gender gap is likely to be a continual feature of the American political landscape: one that shapes everything from elite political behavior to election outcomes.

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