Journal ArticleDOI
Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions
Reads0
Chats0
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
More filters
Dissertation
The Causes and Consequences of Registering with a Political Party
TL;DR: Thornburg et al. as discussed by the authors explored the decision to register with a political party and its effects on an individual's attitudes and behaviors, finding that the decision of registering with a party is influenced by a combination of expressive and instrumental motives and is dependent on the electoral laws in place in a state and local political conditions.
Journal ArticleDOI
A New Method for Re-Analyzing Evaluation Bias: Piecewise Growth Curve Modeling Reveals an Asymmetry in the Evaluation of Pro and Con Arguments
TL;DR: An important finding of these studies was an asymmetry of the evaluation bias toward pro- or con-arguments: theevaluation bias appeared over the whole polarity range of pro- arguments and increased with more and more extreme polarity.
Posted ContentDOI
Deficit Attention Disorder: Partisan-Motivated Reasoning About Government Overspending
John V. Kane,Ian G. Anson +1 more
TL;DR: The authors found that partisans systematically adjust the importance of government overspending based upon which party occupies the presidency, and this proclivity to engage in partisan-motivated reasoning does not require explicit cues from elites, is symmetrical across parties, and appears to function both to protect one's own party and rebuke the opposing party.
Journal ArticleDOI
Following the Party in Time of War? The Implications of Elite Consensus
Matthew Wells,Timothy J. Ryan +1 more
TL;DR: This paper pointed out that news about casualties and signals from signals from foreign intervention can influence public opinion about foreign intervention, and that such signals can be used to predict public opinion on foreign intervention.
Journal ArticleDOI
Shaping voting intentions : an experimental study on the role of information in the Scottish independence referendum
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored how provision of information affects voting intentions in the context of the Scottish independence referendum, by adopting a between-subjects experimental design, and found that providing information reduces indecision about how to vote, and increases the likelihood to vote Yes, especially when confronted with a balanced set of arguments.
References
More filters
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
The American Voter
Journal ArticleDOI
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.