Change In Party Identification Research Articles

Abortion Opinion and Partisan Choice: Untangling the Causal Dynamics

Abstract Starting in the 1980s, U.S. voters began dividing on the abortion issue into pro-life Republicans and pro-choice Democrats. This study shows that the predominant direction of causality was that abortion opinion caused changes in partisanship rather than the reverse, which then had downstream consequences for vote choice. Working with the Youth Parent Socialization Panel Study, I show that those taking pro-choice and pro-life positions in 1982 subsequently changed their party identification to align with those views. By contrast, Democrats and Republicans, as of 1982, did not realign their abortion positions. The partisan conversions were concentrated among ideologically engaged (IE) respondents, especially IE women, who found themselves out of step with their party on abortion. By triggering changes in party identification, panelists’ abortion stances as early as 1982 influenced their vote choices downstream in the 1996 presidential election. Thus, issue-based realignment is viewed here in real time with data from a panel study.

Partisan Stability During Turbulent Times: Evidence from Three American Panel Surveys.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-022-09825-y.

The Changing Politics of American Men, Updated

Abstract This analysis updates through 2016 the gender gap analysis in voting and party identification published by Kaufmann and Petrocik 20 years ago. Some, e.g., Box-Steffensmeier, J. M., S. DeBoef, and T. M. Lin. 2004. “The Dynamics of the Partisan Gender Gap.” American Political Science Review 98 (3): 515–28 suggested that the original findings would diminish in magnitude, but the updated data show that the gender gap continues to reflect male-only changes in party identification. Public officials, political operatives, and the media misstate, sometimes specifically but often only by implication, the nature of the gap. Commentary highlights the lower level of support among women for the Republican Party in both the vote and party identification. Their support for the GOP is considerably lower than it is among men as this paper reaffirms. However, as Kaufmann, K. M., and J. R. Petrocik. 1999. “The Changing Politics of American Men: Understanding the Sources of the Gender Gap.” American Journal of Political Science 43 (3): 864–87 noted, the gap emerged and has continued to grow because of changed attitudes and behavior among men.

Do People Really Become More Conservative as They Age?

Folk wisdom has long held that people become more politically conservative as they grow older, although several empirical studies suggest political attitudes are stable across time. Using data from the Michigan Youth-Parent Socialization Panel Study, we analyze attitudinal change over a major portion of the adult life span. We document changes in party identification, self-reported ideology, and selected issue positions over this time period and place these changes in context by comparing them with contemporaneous national averages. Consistent with previous research but contrary to folk wisdom, our results indicate that political attitudes are remarkably stable over the long term. In contrast to previous research, however, we also find support for folk wisdom: on those occasions when political attitudes do shift across the life span, liberals are more likely to become conservatives than conservatives are to become liberals, suggesting that folk wisdom has some empirical basis even as it overstates the degree of change.

Party Identification in the Age of Obama: Evidence on the Sources of Stability and Systematic Change in Party Identification from a Long-Term Panel Survey

Political scientists have long disagreed about the nature of individual-level change in party identification. While some scholars conclude that party identification is a stable identity—attributing changes in individual responses to measurement error—others show that aggregate party identification responds systematically to short-term forces such as presidential approval. In this article, we use a unique long-term panel measuring party identification twenty times in the 2011–2016 period to support a subtle compromise between these competing claims. We show that individual-level party identification changes systematically over time even after accounting for measurement error and that this change is related to short-term evaluations of the parties and the president. However, although such change exists, it is modest in the medium term and more common among specific subsets of respondents. Finally, we show that that these findings are robust to numerous alternative modeling strategies. We believe that our analysis provides the most systematic examination to date of individual-level changes in party identification.

‘It's The Sun Wot Won It’: Evidence of media influence on political attitudes and voting from a UK quasi-natural experiment

Do print media significantly impact political attitudes and party identification? To examine this question, we draw on a rare quasi-natural experiment that occurred when The Sun, a right-leaning UK tabloid, shifted its support to the Labour party in 1997 and back to the Conservative party in 2010. We compared changes in party identification and political attitudes among Sun readers with non-readers and other newspaper readerships. We find that The Sun's endorsements were associated with a significant increase in readers' support for Labour in 1997, approximately 525,000 votes, and its switch back was associated with about 550,000 extra votes for the Conservatives in 2010. Although we observed changes in readers' party preference, there was no effect on underlying political preferences. The magnitude of these changes, about 2% of the popular vote, would have been unable to alter the outcome of the 1997 General Election, but may have affected the 2010 Election.

The Fluid Middle in South Korean Politics

This article explores the role that political ideology played in shaping the outcome of the 2012 presidential election in South Korea. It conceptualizes political ideology as two-dimensional and utilizes cluster analysis to identify distinct ideological groups. By analyzing two sets of survey data collected in 2012, it discovers four ideological groups. A striking result uncovered by the cluster analysis is the change in party identification and voting in favor of the conservative party made by one group in particular—a change that proved to be the competitive edge the conservative party candidate needed to win the fiercely competitive two-way election. In other words, this group served as the fluid middle.

A generational model of political learning

We propose a mathematical framework for modeling opinion change using large-scale longitudinal data sets. Our framework encompasses two varieties of Bayesian learning theory as well as Mannheim's theory of generational responses to political events. The basic assumptions underlying the model are (1) that historical periods are characterized by shocks to existing political opinions, and (2) that individuals of different ages may attach different weights to those political shocks. Political generations emerge endogenously from these basic assumptions: the political views of identifiable birth cohorts differ, and evolve distinctively through time, due to the interaction of age-specific weights with period-specific shocks. We employ this model to examine generational changes in party identification using survey data from the 1952–2008 American National Election Studies.

Revisiting the Political Theory of Party Identification

Recently, Lewis-Beck et al. (The American Voter Revisited, 2008b) re-created The American Voter using contemporary data. Although these scholars ultimately conclude that voters today behave in ways that are consistent with the account of voting behavior presented in The American Voter, their work nonetheless highlights the importance and value of re-examining past ideas. Given that Lewis-Beck et al. have re-tested the findings of The American Voter, it is both timely and worthwhile to re-examine Fiorina’s (Retrospective voting in American national elections, 1981) political theory of party identification, which is often seen as a critique of the theory of party identification presented in The American Voter, using newly available panel data. In this paper, I re-examine Fiorina’s (Retrospective voting in American national elections, 1981) political theory of party identification using data from the 2000–2002–2004 NES panel study. In addition to applying Fiorina’s approach to party identification to new data, as a more robust test of Fiorina’s theory, I develop a model of party identification where changes in party identification are modeled as a function of the actual changes in retrospective political evaluations. Overall, my findings are broadly consistent with the findings from Fiorina’s original model of party identification; however, my analysis suggests that the distribution of opinions in the electorate and elite signals may be important to changes in party identification.

Explaining change in party identification in adolescence

What are the roots of party identification? Credit (or blame) often falls to parents, who have been shown to play a central role in development of partisan identification in adolescence. Usually in models of parental transmission of partisanship, children are seen as unquestioning recipients of partisan messages. I consider whether this is so, investigating whether differences in young people's levels of political interest, attention, and engagement direct the development of partisan identity. I also explore the effects of factors beyond the household such as the state campaign context in producing partisan instability across a midterm campaign season. I find that the development of adolescent partisanship reflects both the political personality of adolescents and their wider political environment.

Political parties matter: realignment and the return of partisan voting

The Puzzling Reemergence of Partisanship. The Great Transition. The Consequences of Change. Changing Party Compositions and Voter Response. Split Outcomes in House Districts. The Rise and Decline of Split-Ticket Voting and Party Defections. Changes in Party Identification. The Future of Partisanship.

Changing Sides or Changing Minds? Party Identification and Policy Preferences in the American Electorate

Scholars have long debated the individual‐level relationship between partisanship and policy preferences. We argue that partisanship and issue attitudes cause changes in each other, but the pattern of influence varies systematically. Issue‐based change in party identification should occur among individuals who are aware of party differences on an issue and find that issue to be salient. Individuals who are aware of party differences, but do not attach importance to the issue, should evidence party‐based issue change. Those lacking awareness of party differences on an issue should show neither effect. We test our account by examining individuals' party identifications and their attitudes on abortion, government spending and provision of services, and government help for African Americans using the 1992‐94‐96 National Election Study panel study, finding strong support for our argument. We discuss the implications of our findings both for the microlevel study of party identification and the macrolevel analysis of partisan change.

Party Identification

Party identification has long been thought to be the unmoved mover of political evaluations. The research presented here shows that party identification is changeable. In fact, over a 2-year period (1990-1992), we can see that there is a substantively important amount of movement. MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson argue that expectations, not retrospections, lie at the core of political economy. This work takes that logic and shows that the individual-level changes in party identification are explained by both prospective and retrospective economic evaluations. A novel finding in this article is that egocentric economic evaluations are more important than sociotropic evaluations. People are looking at what the government has done to them rather than at what the government has done to the national economy when making political decisions.

Party Polarization and Party Structuring of Policy Attitudes: A Comparison of Three NES Panel Studies

The conventional wisdom in the partisan change literature predicts that increasing party conflict on one issue agenda leads to a decline in party conflict on another agenda—a process called “conflict displacement.” We have argued that recent party politics in the United States has experienced “conflict extension,” with the Democratic and Republican parties in the electorate growing more polarized on cultural, racial, and social welfare issues, rather than conflict displacement. Here, we suggest that the failure of the literature to account for conflict extension results from incomplete assumptions about individual-level partisan change. The partisan change literature typically considers only issue-based change in party identification, which necessarily leads to the aggregate prediction of conflict displacement. This ignores the possibility of party-based change in issue attitudes. If party-based issue conversion does occur, the aggregate result can be conflict extension rather than conflict displacement. Our analysis uses data from the three-wave panel studies conducted by the National Election Studies in 1956, 1958, and 1960; in 1972, 1974, and 1976; and in 1992, 1994, and 1996 to assess our alternative account of individual-level partisan change. We show that when Democratic and Republican elites are polarized on an issue, and party identifiers are aware of those differences, some individuals respond by adjusting their party ties to conform to their issue positions, but others respond by adjusting their issue positions to conform to their party identification.

The Microenvironment of Attitude Change

Studies of social influence have suffered from limitations in available data resources. Consequently, they usually have either failed to consider the dynamic nature of attitudes or have specified the social environment in some restricted way. This article evaluates a dynamic model of attitude change that includes direct information on individuals named as political discussants. Using party identification as an attitude subject to social influence, several findings are advanced. Political discussants are shown to significantly affect change in party identification. In addition, these effects are enhanced or inhibited depending on characteristics of the discussion partners, the nature of the relationship, and properties of the interaction. The nature of the relationship interacts with the other components in some interesting and surprising ways as well. Overall, the results show that intimacy and respect are more important deter-minants of social influence than previously given credit.

The Building of a Republican Regional Base in the South The Elephant Crosses the Mason-Dixon Line

Changes in party identification are examined from 1952 to 1988, with a special emphasis on the findings from the 1988 CPS Super Tuesday Study. It is found that in 1988 Republicans clearly outnumbered Democrats among southern whites for the first time ever. Demographic patterns of partisanship in 1988 are compared to those from the 1950s. Most important is the relationship which now exists between age and party identification. Republicans now have a 29 percent lead over the Democrats among southern whites under 30 years of age. While firm black support of the Democratic party should prevent the South from becoming as solidly Republican as it once was Democratic, there is good reason to expect further Republican gains in the South throughout the remainder of the twentieth century. The 1988 election of George Bush marked the second time in a row that the South voted 4 percent above the national average for the Republican presidential ticket. Just as the Democrats started every presidential campaign during the New Deal with the head start of having the South locked up, it now appears that the Republicans enjoy the strategic benefits of having a strong regional base. If the Republicans can count on winning most of the South's electoral votes, as well as those of the Mountain West (see Galderisi et al. 1987), they need only concentrate on winning a few of the largest states to win a presidential election. Documenting how the Democratic South became the Republican South is therefore crucial to understanding how the Republicans, once accustomed to losing presidential elections, have now become the steady favorite. MARTIN P. WATTENBERG iS professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine. The data presented in this article are from the American National Election Studies, 1952-88, and were provided by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and

Change in Party Identification

In the past few years, a new direction has been taken in the study of economics and politics. Researchers have begun to focus on the role of prospective economic evaluations. The research presented here applies the prospective model to changes in partisanship. Regardless of the time period examined, these prospective economic evaluations exert an important influence on party identification. Individuals change their partisanship in response to their expectations concerning the ability of the parties to provide financial prosperity. These findings indicate that previous examinations of the electorate have understated the rationality of the populace, and, accordingly, previous theories of political behavior are in need of revision.

The Recall of Past Partisanship: Feeble Memories or Frail Concepts?

AbstractIt has been suggested that recall questions are unreliable measures of change in party identification. Data reported in this article confirm that 50 per cent of respondents in the 1974-1980 Canadian National Election Study three-wave panel had inconsistent patterns of recall. This finding urges caution in analysis; more importantly, such inconsistency raises questions about how to interpret recall behaviour in the light of party identification theory. The available evidence and unclear theory seem to point toward the possibility that at least one-half of the national sample lacked a meaningful federal party identification.

Measuring Change in Party Identification in an Election Campaign

Partisan change in the 1984 election campaign is analyzed in the continuous monitoring studies by the National Election Studies and Decision/Making/Information. More change was found in partisanship than is suggested in the literature. There was a shift toward the Republican party throughout the campaign, but the change was not unidirectional. Instead, there was curvilinear change moving toward the Democrat party during parts of the campaign and toward the Republicans during other parts of the campaign. The changes in partisan strength correspond to changes in vote intention, suggesting responsiveness to short-term campaign events. All in all, partisanship is more volatile than we have been led to expect.

The Instability of Partisanship: An Analysis of the 1980 Presidential Election

Scholars have long assigned a key role to party identification as an explanation of voting behaviour. In doing so, they have assumed that individuals' partisan affiliations remain unchanged for long periods of time. But is partisanship sufficiently stable to justify this assumption? At the very least, to be considered a long-term force party identification cannot change during an election. Yet the intra-election stability of party affiliations has been accepted on faith, rather than examined empirically.Our analysis tests this assumption by looking at the evolution of partisanship over the course of the 1980 election. We find that many citizens do alter their partisanship over a single electoral period. These changes in party identification follow a systematic - and not a random - pattern. Both cognitive and affective factors account for this intra-election partisan lability. These findings suggest that much of the previous research on voting behaviour has been seriously misspecified.