Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T15:29:37.840Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Role of Party Identification in Spatial Models of Voting Choice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2015

Romain Lachat
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Party identification and issue preferences are central explanatory factors in many voting choice models. Their effects on party preferences are usually understood to be additive. That is, issue preferences’ impact on party utilities is assumed to be the same among both party identifiers and nonidentifiers. This article suggests an alternative model in which party identification moderates the impact of issues on the vote. The impact of issue preferences on party utilities should be weaker among voters who identify with a party. This hypothesis is tested using data from four recent Dutch election studies. The results show that identifying with a party substantially weakens the issue preference effect on party evaluations, particularly for the party with which a voter identifies.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 641 - 658
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Serra Húnter Professor, Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas 25–27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain ([email protected]). This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grants PBZH1-114601 and PZ-121606). I thank Bruno Arpino, Sylvia Kritzinger, Lucas Leeman, Peter Selb, Wouter van der Brug and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments on previous versions. All errors remain my own. Online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2015.2

References

Adams, James. 2001. Party Competition and Responsible Party Government: A Theory of Spatial Competition Based Upon Insights from Behavioral Research. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Adams, James F., Merrill III, Samuel, and Grofman, Bernard. 2005. A Unified Theory of Party Competition. A Cross-National Analysis Integrating Spatial and Behavioral Factors. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Benoit, Kenneth, and Laver, Michael. 2006. Party Policy in Modern Democracies. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203028179Google Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E.. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Chaiken, Shelly. 1980. ‘Heuristic Versus Systematic Information Processing and the Use of Source Versus Message Cues in Persuasion’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39(5):752–766.10.1037/0022-3514.39.5.752Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Duch, Raymond M., May, Jeff, and Armstrong II, David A.. 2010. ‘Coalition-Directed Voting in Multiparty Democracies’. American Political Science Review 104(4):698–719.10.1017/S0003055410000420Google Scholar
Eagly, Alice H., and Chaiken, Shelly. 1993. The Psychology of Attitudes. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., and Romero, David W.. 1990. ‘Candidate Equilibrium and the Behavioral Model of the Vote’. American Political Science Review 84(4):1103–1126.10.2307/1963255Google Scholar
Ezrow, Lawrence. 2005. ‘Are Moderate Parties Rewarded in Multiparty Systems? A Pooled Analysis of Western European Elections, 1984–1998’. European Journal of Political Research 44(6):881–898.10.1111/j.1475-6765.2005.00251.xGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Fiske, Susan T., and Taylor, Shelley E.. 1991. Social Cognition, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Fiske, Susan T., and Neuberg, Steven L.. 1990. ‘A Continuum of Impression Formation from Category-Based to Individuating Processes: Influences of Information and Motivation on Attention and Interpretation’. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 23:1–74.Google Scholar
Green, Donald, Palmquist, Bradley, and Schickler, Eric. 2002. Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Grynaviski, Jefferey D., and Corrigan, Bryce E.. 2006. ‘Specification Issues in Proximity Models of Candidate Evaluation (with Issue Importance)’. Political Analysis 14:393–420.10.1093/pan/mpl003Google Scholar
Iversen, Torben. 1994. ‘Political Leadership and Representation in West European Democracies: A Test of Three Models of Voting’. American Journal of Political Science 38(1):45–74.Google Scholar
Jessee, Stephen A. 2010. ‘Partisan Bias, Political Information, and Spatial Voting in the 2008 Presidential Election’. The Journal of Politics 72(2):327–340.10.1017/S0022381609990764Google Scholar
Johnston, Richard. 2006. ‘Party Identification: Unmoved Mover or Sum of Preferences?’ Annual Review of Political Science 9:329–351.10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.062404.170523Google Scholar
Kedar, Orit. 2005. ‘When Moderate Voters Prefer Extreme Parties: Policy Balancing in Parliamentary Elections’. American Political Science Review 99(2):185–199.10.1017/S0003055405051592Google Scholar
Knight, Kathleen. 1985. ‘Ideology in the 1980 Election: Ideological Sophistication Does Matter’. Journal of Politics 47(3):828–853.10.2307/2131213Google Scholar
Lachat, Romain. 2008. ‘The Impact of Party Polarization on Ideological Voting’. Electoral Studies 27(4):687–698.Google Scholar
Lachat, Romain. 2011. ‘Electoral Competitiveness and Issue Voting’. Political Behavior 33(4):645–663.10.1007/s11109-010-9151-8Google Scholar
Lodge, Milton, McGraw, Kathleen M., and Stroh, Patrick. 1989. ‘An Impression-Driven Model of Candidate Evaluation’. American Political Science Review 83(2):399–419.10.2307/1962397Google Scholar
Lodge, Milton, and Stroh, Patrick. 1993. ‘Inside the Mental Voting Booth: An Impression-Driven Model of Candidate Evaluation’. In Shanto Iyengar and William J. McGuire (eds), Explorations in Political Psychology, 225–263. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Long, J. Scott. 1997. Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Macdonald, Stuart Elaine, Rabinowitz, George, and Listhaug, Ola. 1995. ‘Political Sophistication and Models of Issue Voting’. British Journal of Political Science 25(4):453–483.Google Scholar
Macdonald, Stuart Elaine, Listhaug, Ola, and Rabinowitz, George. 1991. ‘Issues and Party Support in Multiparty Systems’. American Political Science Review 85(4):1107–1131.Google Scholar
Maddala, G. S. 1983. Limited-Dependent and Qualitative Variables in Econometrics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511810176Google Scholar
Merrill III, Samuel, and Grofman, Bernard. 1999. A Unified Theory of Voting: Directional and Proximity Spatial Models. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511605864Google Scholar
Miller, Warren E., and Shanks, J. Merrill. 1996. The New American Voter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pierce, Roy. 1997. ‘Directional Versus Proximity Models: Verisimilitude as the Criterion’. Journal of Theoretical Politics 9(1):61–74.10.1177/0951692897009001007Google Scholar
Powell, Jr. G. Bingham. 2004. ‘Political Representation in Comparative Politics’. Annual Review of Political Science 7:273–296.10.1146/annurev.polisci.7.012003.104815Google Scholar
Powers, Daniel A., and Xie, Yu. 2000. Statistical Methods for Categorical Data Analysis. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Rabinowitz, George, and Macdonald, Stuart Elaine. 1989. ‘A Directional Theory of Issue Voting’. American Political Science Review 83(1):93–121.10.2307/1956436Google Scholar
Schofield, Norman. 2004. ‘Equilibrium in the Spatial “Valence” Model of Politics’. Journal of Theoretical Politics 16(4):447–481.Google Scholar
Schofield, Norman, and Sened, Itai. 2005. ‘Modeling the Interaction of Parties, Activists, and Voters: Why is the Political Center So Empty?’ European Journal of Political Research 44(3):355–390.Google Scholar
Schofield, Norman, and Sened, Itai. 2006. Multiparty Democracy: Elections and Legislative Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Singh, Shane P. 2014. ‘Linear and Quadratic Utility Loss Functions in Voting Behavior Research’. Journal of Theoretical Politics 26(1):35–58.Google Scholar
Thomassen, Jacques, and Schmitt, Hermann. 1997. ‘Policy Representation’. European Journal of Political Research 32(2):165–184.10.1111/1475-6765.00337Google Scholar
Tillie, Jean. 1995. Party Utility and Voting Behavior. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.Google Scholar
Van der Eijk, Cees, and Marsh, Michael. 2007. ‘Don’t Expect Me to Vote for You Just Because I Like You, Even If You Do Make Me Feel Warm Inside: A Comparison of the Validity of Non-Ipsative Measures of Party Support’. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 29 August – 1 September 2007, Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
Van der Eijk, Cees, van der Brug, Wouter, Kroh, Martin, and Franklin, Mark. 2006. ‘Rethinking the Dependent Variable in Voting Behavior: On the Measurement and Analysis of Electoral Utilities’. Electoral Studies 25(3):424–447.10.1016/j.electstud.2005.06.012Google Scholar
Weinschenk, Aaron C. 2010. ‘Revisiting the Political Theory of Party Identification’. Political Behavior 32(4):473–494.Google Scholar
Westholm, Anders. 1997. ‘Distance Versus Direction: The Illusory Defeat of the Proximity Theory of Electoral Choice’. American Political Science Review 91(4):865–883.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Lachat Dataset

Dataset

http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/27194
Link