Ideology before party: Social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism temporally precede political party support.

Abstract

Although an extensive literature on political ideology and party support has developed, studies examining the temporal ordering of these variables remain lacking. We address this oversight and argue that because ideologies provide a framework for understanding the world, they should forecast changes in party support over time. Accordingly, a random intercepts cross-lagged panel model estimated the annual within-person associations between social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and party support in nine waves of a New Zealand representative longitudinal panel sample from 2009 to 2017 (N=31,537). As hypothesized, SDO and RWA predicted within-person increases in support for the centre-right National Party, but decreases in support for the centre-left Labour Party. Reciprocal associations from party support to ideology were approximately half the magnitude. These results provide some of the most robust evidence to date of the oft-assumed, but largely untested, premise that SDO and RWA predict change in party support.