Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of VotersIn this, the first major treatment of party identification in twenty years, three political scientists assert that identification with political parties still powerfully determines how citizens look at politics and cast their ballots. Challenging prevailing views, they build a case for the continuing theoretical and political significance of partisan identities. The authors maintain that individuals form partisan attachments early in adulthood and that these political identities, much like religious identities, tend to persist or change only slowly over time. Scandals, recessions, and landslide elections do not greatly affect party identification; large shifts in party attachments occur only when the social imagery of a party changes, as when African Americans became part of the Democratic Party in the South after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Drawing on a wealth of data analysis using individual-level and aggregate survey data from the United States and abroad, this study offers a new perspective on party identification that will set the terms of discussion for years to come. |
Contents
1 | |
2 Partisan Groups as Objects of Identification | 24 |
3 A Closer Look at Partisan Stability | 52 |
Evidence from Aggregate Data | 85 |
5 Partisan Stability and Voter Learning | 109 |
6 Party Realignment in the American South | 140 |
7 Partisan Stability outside the United States | 164 |
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Common terms and phrases
American analysis asked assessments attitudes become campaign candidates Chapter choice citizens cohort compared Conservative continued correlation Democratic Party describe early economic effects election electoral error estimate evaluations evidence example expected fact feel find first follows forces Green identify identities ideological important Independents individuals influence interest interview issues Italy Labour leaders learning less Liberal macropartisanship mean measurement Note observed occurred opinion panel partisan change partisan groups partisanship party attachments party identification pattern percentage performance period person political polls positions predict presented president presidential approval question reflect region regression relative remain Republican respondents sample scale seems sense shift short-term similar social groups social identities South Southern stability standard statistical strong studies suggest survey Table tend tion turn United variable vote voters waves weight whites