Party Identification Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Party identification is the psychological allegiance by a voter to a political party. While a debate continues to rage over how stable party identification is, most political scientists continue to conceptualize it as a long-term commitment, opposed to shorter-term factors such as candidate and retrospective evaluations. Retrospective evaluations are subjective judgments by voters on the performance by a party or officeholder in power. Common subjects for retrospective evaluations include the economy, war, and scandal. In the conventional view, first expounded at the University of Michigan in the 1950s and 1960s (most famously in The American Voter), citizens for m their allegiances in young adulthood, and then mostly remain loyal to their party. The pattern of political generations reflects this, where cohorts may reflect their era of political socialization for their entire lifetime. For example, in the United States, the “New Deal generation” who grew up under Franklin Roosevelt remained heavily Democratic throughout their lifespan, while the “Reagan generation” that came of age in the 1980s remains the most Republican age-group in the electorate.

More recently, Morris Fiorina and other scholars have offered a competing, retrospective perspective to explain party identification as a “running tally” of experiences with Democrats and Republicans. This school is more open to the possibility of change over time. There is some evidence from recent political history to support the retrospective view. For example, Republican Party identification fell during the unpopular impeachment of Bill Clinton, soared with George W. Bush’s popularity after 9/11, and fell again during George W. Bush’s second term.

However, all scholars of political behavior unite in their belief in the centrality of party identification. It is the single strongest predictor of vote choice. For example, in both the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections, more than 90 percent of self-identified Republicans and Democrats voted for their party’s presidential nominees. It serves, then, as a central organizing principle in voters’ understanding of the political world, telling them who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are, and helping them decide which information to accept and which to reject. Party leaders give cues to voters as to what the “correct” views are for Democrats or Republicans. Especially in this polarized era, Democrats and Republicans differ systematically in their assessments of the political world, including the most basic facts.

Party identification is generally measured along the seven point scale. This is derived from a two-stage series of questions. First, respondents are asked whether they normally think of themselves as Democrats, Republicans, or none of these. (Studies have shown that very few citizens identify with a minor party).Those who identify with one of the major political parties are asked whether they identify strongly or weakly. Strong partisans almost never desert their party. Those who do not identify with a party are asked whether they “lean” towards one party or the other. The leaners behave much like weak partisans, usually supporting their party, but not as consistently as strong partisans. Leaners behave so much like party identifiers that they are often called closet partisans.

Hence, the seven-point scale includes: Strong Democrat

Weak Democrat

Democrat-leaning Independent

Pure Independent

Republican-leaning Independent

Weak Republican

Strong Republican

Citizens who identify with a political party consistently vote and otherwise participate in politics at a higher rate than do independents. They tend to be more interested in politics, more informed about current events, and more likely to hold coherent views on a variety of issues.

The Michigan school placed party identification at the heart of U.S. politics, downplaying the role of ideology and personality. Indeed, early studies of political behavior found exceedingly low levels of political knowledge among voters, little impact from media exposure, and almost no capacity for issue-based voting, let alone ideological constraint. Accordingly, the Michigan researchers adopted a rather nonideological notion of party identification, seeing it as an almost ascriptive identity usually acquired through parental socialization. While this fit the placid politics of the 1950s well, it failed to account for ideological turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, which also saw a significant decline in party allegiance. By 1976, in The Changing American Voter, Norman Nie, Sidney Verba, and John Petrocikthe were challenging the Michigan model, instead emphasizing the role of ideology, candidate evaluations, and retrospective voting.

More recently, there has been a revival of interest in party identification, both due to developments in the academy and in the political world. Bruce Keith and colleagues show, in The Myth of the Independent Voter, that many leaners are indeed closet partisans, not behaving like the fickle “ticket splitters” they were assumed to be. The 1980s and 1990s saw a revival of partisan voting, this time with a more ideological cast; 2000 and 2004 saw the highest levels of party loyalty on record. Larry Bartels and Marc Hetherington, among others, have demonstrated that partisans have become more loyal and that party identification is based more on perceived ideological differences than it once was. There is even some evidence that the percentage of strong partisans has risen and the number of pure independents has fallen.

While many of the conclusions of The American Voter have come under criticism in recent years, its essential insights about the importance of party identification remain intact. Party identification may be the single most important opinion held by American voters, driving them to the polls and shaping the decisions they make, structuring their worldviews and helping them understand the political universe.

Bibliography:

Abramson, Paul R., John H. Aldrich, and David Rohde. Change and Continuity in the 2004 and 2006 Elections. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2007.
Bartels, Larry M. “Partisanship and Voting Behavior, 1952–1996.” American Journal of Political Science 44, no. 1 (2000): 35–50.
Campbell, Angus, Donald Stokes, Warren Miller, and Philip Converse. The American Voter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Fiorina, Morris. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
Hetherington, Marc J. “Resurgent Mass Partisanship: The Role of Elite Polarization.” American Political Science Review 95, no. 3 (2001): 619–631.
Jacobson, Gary C. A Divider, Not a Uniter: George W. Bush and the American People. New York: Longman, 2006.
Keith, Bruce E., David Magleby, Candice Nelson, Elizabeth Orr, Mark C. Westlye, and Raymond Wolfinger. The Myth of the Independent Voter. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Nie, Norman, Sidney Verba, and John Petrocik. The Changing American Voter. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976.
Zaller, John R. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

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