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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Achen affiliation Alleanza Nazionale American Political analysis asked assessments attitudes behavior Bloc Québécois Britain campaign candidates Chapter citizens Clinton coalition cohort consumer sentiment Democratic Party Democrats and Republicans disattenuated dummy variable economic effects electoral estimate evaluations Forza Italia Gallup ideological Independents individual-level individuals interview issues Kalman filter Labour leaders Liberal log-odds macropartisan macropartisanship measurement error measures of party ment National Election Studies one’s opinion Panel Study panel surveys partisan attachments partisan change partisan groups partisan identities partisan stability party attachments party differential party identification party system party’s pattern percentage perceptions period political parties Political Science polls polychoric predict presidential approval Progressive Conservative publican question R-squared R-squared value realignment regression Republican Party respondents sample sanship scale Schickler seven-point shift short-term forces social groups social identities South statistical stereotypes switching Table tend tion tisan Tory Ulivo variance vote choice voters waves