Journal ArticleDOI
Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions
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TLDR
This paper examined the impact of long-term partisan loyalties on perceptions of specific political figures and events and concluded that partisan bias in political perceptions plays a crucial role in perpetuating and reinforcing sharp differences in opinion between Democrats and Republicans.Abstract:
I examine the impact of long-term partisan loyalties on perceptions of specific political figures and events. In contrast to the notion of partisanship as a simple “running tally” of political assessments, I show that party identification is a pervasive dynamic force shaping citizens' perceptions of, and reactions to, the political world. My analysis employs panel data to isolate the impact of partisan bias in the context of a Bayesian model of opinion change; I also present more straightforward evidence of contrasts in Democrats' and Republicans' perceptions of “objective” politically relevant events. I conclude that partisan bias in political perceptions plays a crucial role in perpetuating and reinforcing sharp differences in opinion between Democrats and Republicans. This conclusion handsomely validates the emphasis placed by the authors of The American Voter on “the role of enduring partisan commitments in shaping attitudes toward political objects.”read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Political Activism and Research Ethics
TL;DR: The authors argue that researchers should focus on stronger evidence-based strategies for reducing bias rather than a blanket recommendation to avoid politics, and that not all forms of political activism pose an equal risk of bias.
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Trumped by Trump? Public Support for Mail Voting in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
TL;DR: This article found that the overall support for expanding VBM in April 2020 falls sharply after just six weeks because Republicans became less worried about catching COVID-19, and unconcerned Republicans became far more opposed to VBM.
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How Bad is it? Elite Influence and the Perceived Seriousness of the Coronavirus Pandemic
TL;DR: This article found that Republican identifiers had by early June crystallized their views on the virus seriousness, the president's performance, and social distancing policies and behaviors, and found that information critical of President Trump's policy decisions produced a backlash causing people to show less concern about the virus's death toll and rate thepresident's performance even more highly.
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Out of step and out of touch: The matter with Kansas in the 2014 midterm election
TL;DR: The authors examined opinions and voting preferences related to two state-wide races in which incumbent overreach played a prominent role in the 2014 mid-term elections in the state of Kansas and found that both Republicans survived reelection, and their actions ensured an unusually competitive midterm in an otherwise deep red state.
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Does Ability Contribute to Partisan Bias?: Evaluating Scientific Research about Political Topics
TL;DR: The authors found that the influence of goals unrelated to accuracy may undermine objective processing, enabling people to construct beliefs and attitudes consistent with one's political identity, which may undermine the ability of objective processing.
References
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Book
An Economic Theory of Democracy
TL;DR: Downs presents a rational calculus of voting that has inspired much of the later work on voting and turnout as discussed by the authors, particularly significant was his conclusion that a rational voter should almost never bother to vote.
Book
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
TL;DR: Zaller as discussed by the authors developed a comprehensive theory to explain how people acquire political information from elites and the mass media and convert it into political preferences, and applied this theory to the dynamics of public opinion on a broad range of subjects, including domestic and foreign policy, trust in government, racial equality, and presidential approval, as well as voting behaviour in U.S. House, Senate and presidential elections.
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The American Voter
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The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.
TL;DR: The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992) as discussed by the authors is a model of mass opinion formation that offers readers an introduction to the prevailing theory of opinion formation.