Do Issues Decide? Partisan Conditioning and Perceptions of Party Issue Positions across the Electoral Cycle

Abstract

In this article we examine the impact of long-term partisan loyalties on perceptions of party positions on major issue dimensions. In contrast to the assumptions of issue voting theories, we argue that partisanship is a pervasive force shaping citizens’ perceptions of party positions and the proximity between those positions and their own issue preferences. The analysis employs a five-wave inter-election panel study to demonstrate the impact of Labour partisanship on perceptions of where the parties stand. We then model the reciprocal influences between Labour Party support and issue perceptions over the electoral cycle, revealing contemporaneous and lagged effects of partisanship on perceptions of issue proximity that far outweigh the contemporaneous effect of proximity on party choice. We conclude that partisan bias in political perceptions plays a crucial role in conditioning perceptions of party issue positions and that conventional rational choice interpretations of the associations between issue perceptions and vote choice are flawed.