7. Recent Evidence on the Stability of Party Identification: The New Michigan Election Study Panel

1980 ◽  
pp. 132-154
Author(s):  
Philip E. Converse ◽  
Gregory B. Markus
Keyword(s):  
Party Identification ◽  
Election Study ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Study Panel

Plus ça change…: The New CPS Election Study Panel

1979 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip E. Converse ◽  
Gregory B. Markus
Keyword(s):  
Party Identification ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Theoretical Significance ◽  
The University ◽  
Study Panel

Between 1956 and 1960, the first long-term panel study of the American electorate was carried out at the University of Michigan. Among other findings from this original panel were sharp contrasts between the high individual-level stability of party identification and more labile individual preferences on major political issues of the day. Since 1960, several changes in the nature of the American electoral response have caught the attention of scholars, including an erosion of party loyalties on one hand and an increasing crystallization of issue attitudes on the other. Completion of a new panel segment, 1972–76, makes it possible to review the original 1956–60 findings in the light of these intervening changes. We discovered that the contrasts in individual-level continuity of party and issue positions remain nearly identical to those estimated for 1956–60. The theoretical significance of these counter-intuitive results is discussed.

The Effect of the Environment on Party Identification

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 1391-1400 ◽  
Author(s):  
G J G Upton ◽  
S J Stray
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Election Study ◽  
The Impact

A major factor underlying a person's voting decision is that person's identification with one or other of the competing political parties. Respondents interviewed in the course of the British Election Study surveys of 1974 and 1979 indicated both their party identification and the strength of that affiliation. This paper is an examination of the impact of the local political environment on the strength of an individual's party identification.

In Search of Left/Right Beliefs in the Canadian Electorate

1986 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald D. Lambert ◽  
James E. Curtis ◽  
Steven D. Brown ◽  
Barry J. Kay
Keyword(s):  
Rating Scale ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Criterion Group ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractWe report on findings from alternative ways of assessing the meaning given to “left” and “right” by respondents in the 1984 National Election Study. Approximately 40 per cent of the sample supplied definitions of the concepts; in comparison, about 60 per cent stated their feelings toward left-wingers and right-wingers and described their political orientations using a seven-point left/right rating scale. Left signified socialism or communism for about one-half of those who supplied definitions, and dislike for left-wingers seemed to be associated with these conceptions of left. Right, which was much more highly regarded than left, signified conservatism for one-quarter of those who defined the term. We also factor analyzed respondents' self-ratings on the left/right scale along with their answers to 15 attitude statements. Left was weakly associated with support for labour's use of the strike weapon. In a criterion group of respondents who had completed university and who had ventured definitions of left and right, self-ratings correlated with factors tapping attitudes toward the military and toward economic disparity and social welfare. As expected, respondents' ratings of themselves on the left/right scale were more similar to their ratings of their preferred parties than to their ratings of other parties. The relationship between self-ratings and ratings of preferred parties generally varied directly with the strength of party identification. We conclude with some observations about the political utility of political labels such as left and right.

How Gender Conditions the Way Citizens Evaluate and Engage with Their Representatives

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mia Costa ◽  
Brian F. Schaffner
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Congressional Election ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Study Panel ◽  
Rate Female

Scholars argue that women’s presence in politics enhances symbolic representation, such as positive evaluations of one’s representative and increased political engagement. However, there is little empirical evidence of these symbolic benefits from descriptive representation. With data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study panel survey, we examine how a change in the gender of a representative affects individuals’ perceptions of that representative and likelihood to contact them. In general, we find that women express more positive evaluations of female representatives than male representatives, yet they are also less likely to contact female representatives. By contrast, the effect of an elected official’s gender does not significantly affect how men evaluate or engage with that official. However, we also show that partisanship conditions these effects, perhaps due to the fact that gender stereotypes operate differently for Democrats than Republicans. For example, women rate female Republican legislators more positively than they do male Republican legislators, but neither women nor men rate Democratic legislators differently based on their gender. The findings provide strong evidence that gender matters when it comes to representation, but contrary to some conventional wisdom, female elected officials may actually enjoy some advantages in terms of their standing among constituents.

Party Identification, Party Choice, and Voting Stability: The Weimar Case

1972 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 1203-1225 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Phillips Shively
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Uneven Distribution ◽  
Rural Residence ◽  
Major Conclusion ◽  
Party Choice ◽  
Ecological Regression ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
The Stability

The stability of voting for subsets of the Weimar population distinguished by sex, religion, and urban-rural residence is estimated: (1) by means of ecological regression, for the period 1924–1928; (2) by an examination of net changes, for the period 1928–1933.The major conclusion is that party identification was not an important factor in the Weimar Republic. Instead, voting seems to have been channeled largely by social and economic structures. Subsidiary conclusions are that uneven distribution of information affected the stability of voting and that most of the Nazi gains from 1928 to 1933 apparently did not come disproportionately from among previous nonvoters.

The Gender Gap Is a Race Gap: Women Voters in US Presidential Elections

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1135-1145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Junn ◽  
Natalie Masuoka
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
White Women ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
The United States ◽  
Election Study ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
American National Election Study

Scholarship on women voters in the United States has focused on the gender gap, showing that, since the 1980s, women are more likely to vote for Democratic Party candidates than men. The persistence of the gender gap has nurtured the conclusion that women are Democrats. This article presents evidence upending that conventional wisdom. It analyzes data from the American National Election Study to demonstrate that white women are the only group of female voters who support Republican Party candidates for president. They have done so by a majority in all but 2 of the last 18 elections. The relevance of race for partisan choice among women voters is estimated with data collected in 2008, 2012, and 2016, and the significance of being white is identified after accounting for political party identification and other predictors.

The Stability of Party Identification in Western Democracies

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 450-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERIC SCHICKLER ◽  
DONALD PHILIP GREEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Measurement Error ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
The United States ◽  
Panel Surveys ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Western Democracies ◽  
The Way

The concept of party identification is widely thought to be of limited utility outside the United States, where partisan attachments are regarded as unstable. The authors argue that estimating the stability of party identification outside the United States requires attention to problems of dimensionality and measurement error. The authors develop a model for estimating the stability of partisanship that addresses these problems, and they apply the model to eight panel surveys drawn from Great Britain, Canada, and Germany. The results suggest that partisanship has been extremely stable in each country, with the exception of recent developments in Canada. The model and findings presented here suggest the need for refinement in the way partisanship is measured, and partisan stability assessed, in multiparty systems.

A Comparison of Voting for U.S. Senator and Representative in 1978

1980 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 633-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan I. Abramowitz
Keyword(s):  
Party Identification ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Senate Elections ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Ideological Voting

This article compares voting for U.S. senator and representative in 1978. Analysis of data from the Center for Political Studies 1978 Election Study reveals that incumbents were better known and more positively evaluated than challengers, but House incumbents enjoyed a much greater advantage than Senate incumbents. The invisibility of most House challengers was a serious obstacle to accountability in House elections. Senate challengers were much more visible to the electorate. In addition, ideology and party identification had a greater impact on evaluations of Senate candidates than on evaluations of House candidates. Evaluations of House incumbents appear to have been based largely on frequent positive contacts between voters and their representative. As a result, ideological voting was more prevalent in Senate elections than in House elections.

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

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. H. MacDermid
Keyword(s):  
Party Identification ◽  
National Sample ◽  
National Election ◽  
Election Study ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
Identification Theory

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.

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