Public Ideology and Political Dynamics in the United States

Abstract

This article explores the role that two theoretically distinct conceptions of mass “ideology”—operational and symbolic—play in shaping policy and electoral change in the United States. I consider both types of ideology as aggregate, dynamic concepts, and find that though the public’s operational and symbolic preferences change in broadly similar ways over time, there are consequential differences in how these two types of ideology respond to the political context and in how they intersect with important political and social outcomes. Changes in the public’s operational ideology—the dominant direction of public views on specific policy matters—react systematically to changes in the policy context and are strongly predictive of both electoral outcomes and federal policy change. Changes in the public’s symbolic ideology—the proportion of citizens who identify as liberals or conservatives—are essentially unconnected to changes in policy and only modestly predictive of electoral results.