The Structure of Ideological Thinking in the American Electorate

Abstract

Methods: Mokken scale analysis of items measuring liberal-conservative consis- tency in political judgments is followed by regression analysis of individual scale scores. Data for the analysis are taken from the 1984 and 1988 CPS National Election Studies. Results: Ideological consistency in political judgments does conform to the hy- pothesized cumulative structure. The empirical scales obtained from the analy- sis show: Systematic differences in the ideological content of political stimuli; much temporal stability, along with changes in the structure of ideological think- ing; and factors that affect individual placements along the cumulative dimen- sion within each year. This study examines the structure of ideological thinking across different political orientations. This approach allows for systematic dif- ferences in the ways that people apply liberal-conservative terms to candidates, parties, and their own political orientations. The assumption underlying this analysis is straightforward: ideological thinking is not a dichotomous characteristic, such that people either do or do not think about politics in ideological terms. Instead, ideological thinking is best viewed in continuous terms; that is, there are many gradations among individuals' abilities to apply the liberal-conservative continuum to spe- cific political stimuli. Furthermore, there may well be systematic differ- ences in the degree to which separate political stimuli are viewed in ideological terms by the American public. If this is the case, then it should be possible to measure both individual citizens and political ob-