Measurement Of Party Identification Research Articles

PTV gap: A new measure of party identification yielding monotonic partisan attitudes and supporting comparative analysis

Despite the cornerstone role of party identification for analyzing voting behavior in the United States, its measurement (in terms of the classic American National Electoral Studies – ANES – seven-point scale) is affected by a systematic problem of non-monotonicity, and it proved impossible to be directly applied outside the United States. We introduce a novel, complementary measurement approach aimed at addressing both problems. We test on US data (an expressly collected computer-assisted web interviewing survey dataset) a new, seven-point scale of partisanship constructed from PTV (propensity-to-vote) items, acting as projective devices for capturing partisan preferences, and routinely employed in multi-party systems. We show that a PTV-based (suitable for comparative analysis) seven-point scale of partisanship outperforms the classic ANES scale. Groups identified by the new scale show monotonic partisan attitudes, and the comparison of multivariate models of political attitudes testify significantly larger effects for the new scale, as well as an equal or higher predictive ability on a range of political attitudes.

Me, Myself, and (I), (D), or (R)? Partisanship and Political Cognition through the Lens of Implicit Identity

Novel national survey data (spanning eight years), a parsimonious definition of identity, and a new Implicit Association Test are brought together to examine “implicit party identity” for the first time. This offers the most direct evidence available that voters associate themselves with their party at a visceral level, sometimes in a more or less pronounced way than they realize or report. This pre-introspection, automatic association relates strongly to voter evaluation and interpretation of the political world. Comparisons with standard explicit measures and three key outcomes (affect, differential evaluation, and motivated processing) offer insight regarding the nature, distribution, and measurement of party identification. Explicit and implicit measures largely corroborate each other in distinguishing between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents but deviate in registering partisan intensity. “Leaners” appear closer to partisans than to pure independents, and implicit identity yields a more gradua...

Incorporation of Latino Immigrants into the American Party System

Are Latinos, especially immigrants, less partisan than other American ethnic groups? In the 2012 Latino Immigrant National Election Study and American National Election Studies datasets, a greater proportion of Latinos self-categorize as partisans on the standard measure of party identification than previously theorized. Only non-naturalized Latino immigrants showed unusual nonincorporation into the party system. Both continuing subjective engagement in the politics of their country of origin and nonpolitical assimilation in the United States were associated with greater partisan self-categorization, even controlling for relevant demographics. However, self-categorization may underestimate incorporation into the party system by overlooking latent partisan preferences. Indeed, Latino immigrants show quite crystallized attitudes toward the parties and their candidates, even those who did not self-categorize as Democrats or Republicans. Only non-naturalized immigrants show notably low levels of partisan crystallization. Most seemingly unincorporated Latino immigrants may simply be in the early stages of developing partisan identities rather than deliberately standing outside the party system.

PARTY IDENTIFICATION IN LITHUANIA: THE OUTCOME OF FAMILY SOCIALISATION, POLITICAL CLEAVAGES, OR HABIT?

Why do people tend to vote for the same political party many years, despite the fact that parties change their electoral programs, their leaders and their candidates in elections? Why do they tend to justify the actions of the party much more easily than others? The answer to those questions is provided by the party identification theory originating in the prominent Michigan school of electoral behaviour research.While there is some evidence that party identification is decreasing in Western countries, the concept is still widely discussed and used in electoral research. There is a huge amount of literature on the measurement issues, changing level of partisanship in US, Europe and other countries, on the determinants and the effects of party identification. The empirical evidence on the formation of the party identification in new democracies, however, is scarce. The case of Lithuania, therefore, is interesting and informative.The aim of the article is to examine the factors of the emergence of party identification in Lithuania, trying to reveal the mechanisms of the formation of partisanship in the emergent state of party system formation. The analysis is based on the data from the representative face-to-face post-electoral survey carried out in 13 November – 10 December 2012 (N = 1500) for the Lithuanian National Election Study.In the first part of the article, the two rival theories of party identification are introduced and hypotheses about the factors of party identification formation are presented. In the second part, the methodological issues of measurement of party identification are discussed and the level of party identification in Lithuania is examined. The third part of the article focuses on the determinants of party identification. Three main hypotheses are tested. The first hypothesis presumes that party identification derives from the political socialisation in family and depends on the party identification of parents. Family socialisation in Lithuania, however, should only have an impact on those who were born after 1972 because they received their political socialisation in democratic regime. The second hypothesis is related to the theory of social cleavages. It states that the probability of having party identification is bigger for those who feel the salient social cleavage in the society and recognize its political relevance. Finally, the third hypothesis, based on the theoretical claim of Philip Converse, is that party identification depends on the length of democratic experience of electorate.Careful analysis of the level of party identification reveals that no less than a third of Lithuanian electorate could be characterised as party identifiers. Only half of them, however, have an affective relation with their party. The partisanship of the others seems to be based on rational evaluation rather than psychological attachment. The three parties that have most of partisan supporters are the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, the Labour Party and the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats.The results of the analysis reveal that consistent party identification of parents has an impact on the party identification of their children. The effect, however, is not different for those who are born before and after 1972. It suggests that this is the effect of social network rather than family socialisation. The probability to have a party identification is higher for those who are most anti-communist as it is the dominant political cleavage in Lithuania. The impact, however, is mediated by age and moderated by interest in politics.The impact of age on party identification is considerable but not consistent with the hypothesis. The theory presumes that the probability to have a party identification should consistently grow until the age of 40 and afterwards it should remain constant. The results of the logistic regression, however, reveal that the highest probability to have a party identification is in the 50–59 age group rather than 30–39, even after controlling other variables such as interest in politics, political sophistication and salience of political cleavages. One possible explanation of this finding suggests that party identification is strongest for the generation that was most active in the formation of democratic political system in Lithuania in 1988–1991.

My Heart Says One Thing but My Head Says Another? Men, Women, and the Psychology of Partisanship in Britain

The point of departure for this study is the recent work of Burden (2008) on the “gender gap” in partisanship in the United States. He shows that the preponderance of Democratic identification among women is partly a function of the measurement of party identification. When respondents were asked “Do you feel that you are” rather than, more traditionally, “Do you think of yourself as” a Democrat or Republican, the sex gap narrowed to statistical nonsignificance. Burden's explanation for this result lies in the psychology of partisanship. The traditional “think of yourself as” (or cognitive) question primes women to consider their partisanship as a social identity, which in turn activates the stereotypical association between women and the Democratic Party. The “feel that you are” (or affective) question encourages a deeper, more personalized response, rendering social identity less relevant and thereby nullifying the effect of that stereotype.

Explaining Politics, Not Polls: Reexamining Macropartisanship with Recalibrated NES Data

Like all surveys, the American National Election Studies (NES) imperfectly reflects population characteristics. There are well- known differences between actual and NES-reported turnout rates and between actual and NES-reported presidential vote divisions. This re- search seeks to determine whether the aggregate misrepresentation of turnout and vote choice affects the aggregate measurement of party identification: macropartisanship. After NES data are reweighted to cor- rect for turnout and vote choice errors, macropartisanship is found to be more stable, to be less sensitive to short-term political conditions, and to have shifted more in the Republican direction in the early 1980s. The strength of partisanship also declined a bit more in the 1970s and re- bounded a bit less in recent years than the uncorrected NES data indicate. According to the American National Election Studies (NES), 77.6 percent of eligible Americans turned out to vote in the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama received 54.8 percent to John McCain's 45.2 percent of the two-party popular vote. This is what the NES data indicate, but this is not what hap- pened. By our best counts, turnout was 61.7 percent of the voting-eligible population, Obama received 53.7 percent, and McCain received 46.3 percent of the two-party popular vote. Despite inaccuracies of this sort, the NES remains the gold standard of survey data to scholars of American elections. NES data are routinely reported

Partisan Dealignment, Party Attachments and Leader Effects

This paper takes issue with the widespread assumption of constancy in the meaning and measurement of party identification over time and space. It holds that the partisan dealignment common to established democracies has eroded the validity of the Michigan scale’s assumption that voters can identify with only one party, arguing instead that dealignment can encourage secondary attachments to other parties. To persist with an exclusivist conceptualization of party identification under these conditions is shown to risk the misspecification of voting models since the effects of these secondary attachments can be misleadingly attributed to short‐term influences, like leaders, associated with those parties. The dynamics of the voting decision can thereby be seriously distorted. The force of this argument is demonstrated through a comparison of general election outcomes in relatively aligned Australia and relatively dealigned Great Britain.

Partisanship, Performance and Personality

The study of voting behaviour is characterized by controversy about the `importance' of various explanatory themes and specific variables, but there is a widespread reluctance to assess these hypotheses in a comprehensive causal model. This article specifies a model of Labour and Conservative voting in the 2001 British General Election which incorporates a whole series of competing and complementary hypotheses. The results suggest that partisanship, prospective evaluations of competence and favourable evaluations of Tony Blair all contributed to Labour's victory, while retrospective evaluations of Labour's record on crime and asylum-seekers reduced the size of Labour's victory. Analyses that incorporate a new measure of party identification suggest that long-term partisanship may have contributed less and short-term factors correspondingly more to the aggregate election outcome.

Identifying the True Party Identifiers

The paper reviews the evidence that the measure of party identification (or partisanship) routinely used in social surveys and national election studies is flawed due to the fact that it overestimates the number of party identifiers in any given sample. The results of a 12-month survey experiment are reported to show that an alternative measure of party identification, one that does not prompt respondents with the names of the political parties and allows respondents a clear opportunity to register a `non-identity', substantially reduces the proportion of reported party identifiers.

Realignment and Macropartisanship

Aggregate party identification (macropartisanship) has exhibited substantial movement in the U.S. electorate over the last half century. We contend that a major key to that movement is a rare, massive, and enduring shift of the electoral equilibrium commonly known as a partisan realignment. The research, which is based on time-series data that employ the classic measurement of party identification, shows that the 1980 election triggered a systematic growth of Republican identification that cut deeply into the overwhelming Democratic lead dating back to the New Deal realignment. Although short-term fluctuations in macropartisanship are responsive to the elements of everyday politics, neither presidential approval nor consumer sentiment is found responsible for the 1980 shift.

The measurement of party identification in Britain: Where do we stand now?

The measurement of party identification in Britain: Where do we stand now?

Improving the measurement of party identification in Britain

This article points out a paradox: most political scientists apparently subscribe to a party identification model of voting behaviour and yet there is widespread concem about how that concept is currently measured. In particular there are doubts about whether the traditional measure captures the long-tenn nature of party identification. The article presents evidence from an experiment, carried out by the Gallup Organization, which compares the traditional measure with a new one. The results suggest that the traditional measure of party identification overstates the level of identification and leads to an exaggerated impression of the relationship between this variable and vote. The article ends with an appeal for more research into the measurement of party identification.

Measurement and the dynamics of party identification

Recent work has questioned the conclusions of the revisionist model of party identification. One central issue concerns the measurement of party identification. According to the critics, the research showing that partisanship is responsive to other political evaluations is in error because of peculiarities of measurement. I test this assertion by considering the effects that changes in measurement have on estimates of the dynamics of party identification. The results strongly support the original revisionist conclusions. The findings of responsiveness of party identification to evaluations of party issue positions are quite robust in the face of alternative measures of party identification.

Party identification and party closeness in comparative perspective

The present analysis uses data from 1974 and 1981 U. S. cross sections, which incorporate a panel, to compare the standard NES measure of party identification (ID) with a measure of partisanship derived from a party closeness question widely employed in cross-national research. Important features of the two scales are examined by transforming the closeness measure into a scale of very close, fairly close, not very close, and no preference corresponding to the seven-point ID scale. The scales are highly correlated and are similar in their reliability. More than 75% of the “independents” in the ID scale choose a party in the closeness version, and over half of these select the “fairly close” category. Respondents do not volunteer that they are independents when that alternative is not stated in the question.

Multiple Party Identifiers and the Measurement of Party Identification

We examine the extent of multiple partisan identification in contemporary American politics and the degree to which this phenomenon may account for the "intransitivity" problem noted by Petrocik (1974). Results indicate, first, that enough multiple identifiers exist to make the concept potentially useful. Furthermore, multiple identifications do provide a partial explanation for the intransitivities in the relationship between political participation and the traditional party identification measure, as removal of multiple identifiers results in a lessening or disappearance of these intransitivities. Our findings lend support to the view that the traditional partisanship measure is influenced by the presence of multiple responses to national, state, and local party systems, and is therefore not a simple unidimensional entity.

The Cognitive Utility of Partisanship

rT V HE DOMINANT concept in the study of voting behavior is partisanship, especially its operationalization by the Survey Research Center/Center for Political Studies as party identification. Given its strong impact on behavior, perceptions of the political world, and other political attitudes, partisanship has been the subject of intense scrutiny. It has been empirically examined and theoretically analyzed both as a dependent variable1 and as an independent variable.2 Other research has concentrated on a thorough treatment of the problems surrounding the conceptualization and measurement of party identification.3 As originally formulated by the authors of The American Voter (Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes, 1960), party identification is a psychological concept, serving psychological functions. These functions would include the reinforcement of vote choices, and perceptual screening of political actors and events. But one school of research has attempted to describe and analyze the political content and functions of party identification, by focusing on the policy bases of partisanship.4 This approach is useful

Maximizing utility at the polls? A replication of Himmelweit's ‘Consumer Model of Voting’ with German election data from 1983

Abstract. A rational choice model of voting behaviour suggested by Himmelweit et al. is put to an empirical test in the context of the 1983 West German general election. Compared to the traditional measure of party identification, an indicator based on multi‐attribute utility theory (MAUT) considerations fails to be as dominant as in the original British data. However, specific context effects were at work in the German 1983 election. Also, the party identification measure is problematic itself. It is concluded that the MAUT approach deserves further elaboration; several methodological improvements are discussed.

Partisanship, Independence, and No Preference: Another Look at the Measurement of Party Identification

This study challenges the conclusion, by Miller and Wattenberg, that the decline of partisanship in the United States is due largely to the diminished saliency of our parties as instruments of democratic government. The Miller-Wattenberg argument is built on an analysis of discrepancies in the CPS measure of party identification. As the results below show, however, the traditional seven-point scale is more appropriatp than the alternative conceptualization offered by these authors for examining popular attitudes toward the parties, or toward political parties generally. Nopreference nonpartisans and self-professed Independents do indeed differ in some important respects -but their differences have less to do with the way they view the parties than with their orientation toward the symbols of partisan independence. Although the saliency hypothesis may account for the rise of no-preference nonpartisanship (relative to independence) since the late sixties, the process of party disaggregation itself cannot be so easily explained.

Measuring Party Identification: Independent or No Partisan Preference?

This study examines how have been classified by the traditional measure of party identification in the Center for Political Studies' national election series. The studies have combined no-preference respondents and self-labeled into the same category, thereby clouding the meaning of declining party identification. A steady increase in no-preference respondents between 1964 and 1980 accounts for the growth in nonpartisanship over these years. The no-preference nonpartisans are distinct from Independents in their level of political involvement and attitudes toward political independence. The declining party identification in recent years reflects the reduced saliency of parties in the political process more than dissatisfaction with party performance.