Part of the Politics series |
Party politics |
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Party identification refers to the political party with which an individual is affiliated with. Party identification is typically determined by the political party that an individual most commonly supports (by voting or other means).
Some researchers view party identification as "a form of social identity", [1] [2] in the same way that a person identifies with a religious or ethnic group. This identity develops early in a person's life mainly through family and social influences. This description would make party identification a stable perspective, which develops as a consequence of personal, family, social, and environmental factors. Other researchers consider party identification to be more flexible and more of a conscious choice. They see it as a position and a choice based on the continued assessment of the political, economic, and social environment. Party identification can increase or even shift by motivating events or conditions in the country.
Party identification has been most studied in the United States where it is considered among the most stable and early-formed identities an individual may have. [3] In other countries, party identification has often been considered a subset of other levels of identity such as class, religion, or language; or to vary rapidly over time. [2]
A number of studies have found that a partisan lens affects how a person perceives the world. [4] [5] [6] Partisan voters judge character flaws more harshly in rival candidates than their own, believe the economy is doing better when their own party is in power, and underplay scandals and failures of their own side. [7] A recent study shows that the impact of partisanship is likely to be the largest relative to other social identities over class, religion, gender, age, and even nationality, by analyzing 25 democracies in Europe, [8] whose party identification has been viewed to be more flexible and weaker compared to that of the United States.
Party Identification can also be looked at in British politics. In the UK, the two main political parties are the Labour Party and the Conservative Party but there are also other smaller challenger parties. Research shows that fewer British people identify with a political party now than thirty years ago. [9] In 2012, a study showed that 72% of Britons surveyed did identify with a political party. [9] Younger people are generally less likely to identify with a political party in comparison to both older voters and voters thirty years ago.
In the 1950s the Michigan Model described in The American Voter rose to prominence. It argues that partisan identity forms early in life and rarely changes, with the rare exception of realignment elections. Voting behaviour and political opinions grow out of this partisanship. The theory worked well to explain why party structures remained stable in most democracies for the first part of the 20th century. [10] Political socialisation remains the bedrock of many theories about partisanship and party choice. Those we grow up with and spend time around, most notably our families, define much of how we see the political world and guide our first political choices. The Michigan model, based in large part on parental socialization, was developed to explain American voting behaviour. Partisanship and political identities, like religion or class, are passed on from parent to child. [10] Recent research demonstrates that these parent socialisation processes are often stronger in the case of mothers. [11] and is significantly weaker in the case of LGBTQ+ children. [12]
In the 1980s, a revisionist school developed along with the breakdown of the two-party system and growing dealignment in several major industrialized democracies. It argues that partisan identity formed slowly in a Bayesian process as voters accumulate data and opinions over a lifetime. By late in life, a single new piece of information will have little effect, but there is always the opportunity for partisan identity to change and will fluctuate based on short-term events for many voters. [13]
Today the view of partisan identity being the main determinant of a person's political beliefs and actions remains predominant among American political scientists, those from other countries put less emphasis on it. [14]
It is important to measure party identification in order to determine its strengths and weaknesses. Political scientists have developed many ways to measure party identification in order to examine and evaluate it.
One American method of measuring party identification uses the Likert Scale, a 7-point scale to measure party identification, with Strong Democrat on one extreme and Strong Republican at the other. In between the two extremes are the classifications of "Lean Democrat/Republican" and "Weak Democrat/Republican".
Strong Democrat | Weak Democrat | Lean Democrat | Independent | Lean Republican | Weak Republican | Strong Republican |
Those people who identify with a party tend to vote for their party's candidate for various offices in high percentages. Those who consider themselves to be strong partisans, strong Democrats and strong Republicans respectively, tend to be the most faithful in voting for their party's nominee for office. In the case of voting for president, since the 1970s, party identification on voting behavior has been increasing significantly. By the late 1990s, party identification on voting behavior was at the highest level of any election since the 1950s. [15] When voting in congressional elections, the trend is similar. Strong party identifiers voted overwhelmingly for their party's nominee in the general election. It is important to note that each party respectively in certain elections, would have stronger voting behavior of their strongest party identifiers. For instance, in the years the Democrats dominated House and Senate elections in the 1970s and 1980s, it can be explained that their strong party identifiers were more loyal in voting for their party's nominee for Congress than the Republicans were. [16]
The same level of voting behavior can also be applied to state and local levels. While straight ticket voting has declined among the general voting population, it is still prevalent in those who are strong Republicans and strong Democrats. [16] According to Paul Allen Beck and colleagues, "the stronger an individual's party identification was, the more likely he or she was to vote a straight ticket." [17]
Party identification and party membership are conceptually distinct. Party identification, as described above, is a social identity. Party membership is a formal form of affiliation with a party, often involving registration with a party organization. [18]
Party membership can serve as an 'anchor' on a voter's party identification, such that they remain with the party even when their views differ from declared party platforms. These party members tend to remain loyal in downballot or lower salience elections. [19] This is often the case when party coalitions are in flux, such as the Republican realignment in the Southern United States in the second half of the twentieth century. [20]
In the United States, politics functions within a framework of a constitutional federal republic. The three distinct branches hold share powers: the U.S. Congress which forms the legislative branch, a bicameral legislative body comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate; the executive branch, which is headed by the president of the United States, who serves as the country's head of state and government; and the judicial branch, composed of the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, and which exercises judicial power.
Philip Ernest Converse was an American political scientist. He was a professor in political science and sociology at the University of Michigan who conducted research on public opinion, survey research, and quantitative social science.
In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford University political scientists Adam Bonica and Michael McFaul, there is a consensus among political scientists that "democracies perform better when more people vote."
Political polarization is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization and affective polarization.
The Cook Partisan Voting Index, abbreviated PVI or CPVI, is a measurement of how partisan a United States congressional district or state is. This partisanship is indicated as lean towards either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, compared to the nation as a whole, based on how that district or state voted in the previous two presidential elections.
Dealignment, in political science, is a trend or process whereby a large portion of the electorate abandons its previous partisan affiliation, without developing a new one to replace it. It is contrasted with political realignment.
An independent voter, often also called an unaffiliated voter or non-affiliated voter in the United States, is a voter who does not align themselves with a political party. An independent is variously defined as a voter who votes for candidates on issues rather than on the basis of a political ideology or partisanship; a voter who does not have long-standing loyalty to, or identification with, a political party; a voter who does not usually vote for the same political party from election to election; or a voter who self-describes as an independent.
Political socialization is the process by which individuals internalize and develop their political values, ideas, attitudes, and perceptions via the agents of socialization. Political socialization occurs through processes of socialization, that can be structured as primary and secondary socialization. Primary socialization agents include the family, whereas secondary socialization refers to agents outside the family. Agents such as family, education, media, and peers influence the most in establishing varying political lenses that frame one's perception of political values, ideas, and attitudes. These perceptions, in turn, shape and define individuals' definitions of who they are and how they should behave in the political and economic institutions in which they live. This learning process shapes perceptions that influence which norms, behaviors, values, opinions, morals, and priorities will ultimately shape their political ideology: it is a "study of the developmental processes by which people of all ages and adolescents acquire political cognition, attitudes, and behaviors." These agents expose individuals through varying degrees of influence, inducing them into the political culture and their orientations towards political objects. Throughout a lifetime, these experiences influence your political identity and shape your political outlook.
A partisan is a committed member of a political party. In multi-party systems, the term is used for persons who strongly support their party's policies and are reluctant to compromise with political opponents.
A nonpartisan blanket primary is a primary election in which all candidates for the same elected office run against each other at once, regardless of the political party. Partisan elections are, on the other hand, segregated by political party. Nonpartisan blanket primaries are slightly different from the two-round system in that the first round takes place alongside other primary elections, and the second round is never skipped.
The Michigan model is a theory of voter choice, based primarily on sociological and party identification factors. Originally proposed by political scientists, beginning with an investigation of the 1952 Presidential election, at the University of Michigan's Survey Research Centre. These scholars developed and refined an approach to voting behaviour in terms of a voter's psychological attachment to a political party, acknowledging cleavages on a group level, which would be continued over the next two decades.
The Latino vote or refers to the voting trends during elections in the United States by eligible voters of Latino background. This phrase is usually mentioned by the media as a way to label voters of this ethnicity, and to opine that this demographic group could potentially tilt the outcome of an election, and how candidates have developed messaging strategies to this ethnic group.
Networks in electoral behavior, as a part of political science, refers to the relevance of networks in forming citizens’ voting behavior at parliamentary, presidential or local elections. There are several theories emphasizing different factors which may shape citizens' voting behavior. Many influential theories ignore the possible influence of individuals' networks in forming vote choices and focus mainly on the effects of own political attitudes – such as party loyalties or party identification developed in childhood proposed by the Michigan model, or on the influence of rational calculations about the political parties’ ideological positions as proposed by spatial and valence theories. These theories offer models of electoral behavior in which individuals are not analyzed within their social networks and environments. In a more general context, some authors warn that the hypothesis testing done mainly based on sample surveys and focused on individuals’ attributes without looking at relational data seems to be a poor methodological instrument. However, models emphasizing the influence of individuals’ social networks in shaping their electoral choices have been also present in the literature from the very beginning.
Voter ID laws in the United States are laws that require a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote, receive a ballot for an election, or to actually vote in elections in the United States.
Voting behavior refers to how people decide how to vote. This decision is shaped by a complex interplay between an individual voter's attitudes as well as social factors. Voter attitudes include characteristics such as ideological predisposition, party identity, degree of satisfaction with the existing government, public policy leanings, and feelings about a candidate's personality traits. Social factors include race, religion and degree of religiosity, social and economic class, educational level, regional characteristics, and gender. The degree to which a person identifies with a political party influences voting behavior, as does social identity. Voter decision-making is not a purely rational endeavor but rather is profoundly influenced by personal and social biases and deeply held beliefs as well as characteristics such as personality, memory, emotions, and other psychological factors. Voting advice applications and avoidance of wasted votes through strategic voting can impact voting behavior.
Political identity is a form of social identity marking membership of certain groups that share a common struggle for a certain form of power. This can include identification with a political party, but also positions on specific political issues, nationalism, inter-ethnic relations or more abstract ideological themes.
Voter segments in political polling in the United States consist of all adults, registered voters, and likely voters.
Political cognition refers to the study of how individuals come to understand the political world, and how this understanding leads to political behavior. Some of the processes studied under the umbrella of political cognition include attention, interpretation, judgment, and memory. Most of the advancements in the area have been made by scholars in the fields of social psychology, political science, and communication studies.
Negative partisanship is the tendency of some voters to form their political opinions primarily in opposition to political parties they dislike. Whereas traditional partisanship involves supporting the policy positions of one's own party, its negative counterpart in turn means opposing those positions of a disliked party. It has been claimed to be the cause of severe polarization in American politics. It has also been studied in the Canadian context, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. Cross-national studies indicate that negative partisanship undermines public satisfaction with democracy, which threatens democratic stability. Traditional partisans, on the other hand, are more likely to support their country's democracy, which promotes democratic stability.
Political polarization is a prominent component of politics in the United States. Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization and affective polarization, both of which are apparent in the United States. In the last few decades, the U.S. has experienced a greater surge in ideological polarization and affective polarization than comparable democracies.