Abstract
It is commonly assumed that how individuals identify on the political spectrum–whether liberal, conservative, or moderate–has a universal meaning when it comes to policy stances and voting behavior. But, does political identity mean the same thing from place to place? Using data collected from across the U.S. we find that even when people share the same political identity, those in “bluer” locations are more likely to support left-leaning policies and vote for Democratic candidates than those in “redder” locations. Because the meaning of political identity is inconsistent across locations, individuals who share the same political identity sometimes espouse opposing policy stances. Meanwhile, those with opposing identities sometimes endorse identical policy stances. Such findings suggest that researchers, campaigners, and pollsters must use caution when extrapolating policy preferences and voting behavior from political identity, and that animosity toward the other end of the political spectrum is sometimes misplaced.
Highlights
When it comes to politics, how do you identify? Slightly conservative? Extremely liberal? Moderate, middle of the road? Academics, political campaigns, and pollsters commonly use people’s political identity as a heuristic for classifying and making judgments about what people believe, who they will vote for, and whether they should be targeted for political persuasion
With data from the American National Election Study (ANES) (Nissues = 1,809, Nvoting = 3,862) we assessed the correspondence between participants’ reported political identity (e.g., “slightly conservative”) and their stances on 9 political issues. We examined whether this correspondence shifts depending on state “blueness”, testing whether individuals–regardless of political identity–hold different policy positions depending on their state
In this case the interaction between political identity and state blueness was barely significant, R2change = .000, F(1, 8332) = 3.99, p = .046, and exhibited a different pattern than that observed in the 2012 data, suggesting that interactive effects may be inconsistent over time
Summary
Political campaigns, and pollsters commonly use people’s political identity as a heuristic for classifying and making judgments about what people believe, who they will vote for, and whether they should be targeted for political persuasion. Research suggests that explicit prejudice is on the decline in most domains (e.g., race), it is on the rise when it comes to political identity [2, 3]. Do political identities have consistent meanings across people and places, or might researchers, campaigners, pollsters, and the lay public be judging a moving target (c.f., [4,5,6,7,8,9])?.
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