Partisanship and Voting Behavior, 1952-1996

Abstract

I assess extent of in American national elections since 1952 using a series of simple probit analyses. My measure of partisan voting is sensitive both to changes in distribution of partisanship and to changes in electoral relevance of partisanship. I find that impact of partisan loyalties on voting has increased in each of last six presidential elections, reaching a level in 1996 almost 80 percent higher than in 1972-and significantly higher than in any presidential election in at least 50 years. impact of partisanship on voting in congressional elections has also increased markedly, albeit more recently and to a level still well below that of 1950s. I conclude that conventional wisdom among scholars and commentators regarding of in American politics is badly outdated. he of is one of most familiar themes in popular and scholarly discourse about contemporary American politics. One influential journalist has asserted that The most important phenomenon of American politics in past quarter century has been rise of independent voters (Smith 1988, 671). Textbook writers tell their students that Voters no longer strongly identify with one of major parties as they once did (Wilson and Dilulio 1995, 180) and that the two major parties are no longer as central as they once were in tying people's everyday concerns to their choices in political system (Greenberg and Page 1997, 269). most persistent academic analyst of partisan decline has argued that For over four decades American public has been drifting away from two major political (Wattenberg 1996, ix), while another prominent scholar has referred to a massive decay of partisan electoral linkages and to the ruins of traditional partisan regime (Burnham 1989, 24). I shall argue here that this conventional wisdom regarding of is both exaggerated and outdated. Partisan loyalties in American public have rebounded significantly since mid-1970s, especially among those who actually turn out to vote. Meanwhile, impact of partisanship on voting has increased markedly in recent years, both at presidential level (where overall impact of partisanship in 1996 was almost 80 percent greater than in 1972) and at congressional level (where overall impact of partisanship in 1996 was almost 60 percent greater than in 1978). Far from partisans using their identifications less and less as a cue in voting behavior (Wattenberg 1996, 27), my analysis suggests that loyalties had at least as much impact on voting at presidential level in 1980s as in 1950s (Bartels 1992, 249)-and even more in 1990s than in 1980s.