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
Journal ArticleDOI
Expressive Versus Instrumental Partisanship in Multiparty European Systems
Journal ArticleDOI
Political position and social knowledge
John Levi Martin,Matthew Desmond +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine what citizens gain from their subjective placement on the dimension from liberalism to conservatism by using the results of a survey experiment that alters aspects of a hypothetical policy.
Journal ArticleDOI
Campaign Persuasion and Nascent Partisanship in Mexico's New Democracy
TL;DR: The authors examined a new democracy where voters' weaker partisan attachments and lower levels of political information magnify the effects of candidates' asymmetric media investments to create large persuasion effects. But, despite ample evidence of preelection volatility in vote intentions in new democracies, scholars of comparative politics remain skeptical that campaigns affect election outcomes.
Book
The Oxford Handbook of American Elections and Political Behavior
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a survey on the role of women in elections other than presidential elections. But they focus mainly on women's involvement in the election process, focusing on self-and otherwise candidates.
Book
Electing Judges: The Surprising Effects of Campaigning on Judicial Legitimacy
TL;DR: Gibson as discussed by the authors found that voters understand the process of deciding cases to be an exercise in policymaking, rather than of simply applying laws to individual cases, and consequently think it is important for candidates to reveal where they stand on important issues.
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.