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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Partisan Moods: Polarization and the Dynamics of Mass Party Preferences
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors disaggregate partisan polarization into its constituent parts, the dynamic preferences of the mass Democratic and Republican parties, and show that party polarization may be catalyzed by the mass parties' differential responsiveness to changes in the macro political-economic context.
Book
Globalization and Mass Politics: Retaining the Room to Maneuver
TL;DR: This article argued that by reducing the room in which to maneuver in policy making, globalization reduces the importance of economic-based issues while increasing the electoral importance of non-economic issues, and the argument is tested on original and existing data sources.
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From voter ID to party ID: How political parties affect perceptions of election fraud in the U.S.
TL;DR: This paper used a survey experiment to assess what individuals understand about election fraud and under what circumstances they see it as a problem, and found that political parties are central to answering both these questions.
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Telling the Truth about Believing the Lies? Evidence for the Limited Prevalence of Expressive Survey Responding
TL;DR: The authors assess the extent to which subscription to political rumors represents genuine beliefs as opposed to expressive responses, and they find that the incidence of expressive responding is very small, though somewhat larger for Democrats than Republicans.
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How Politics Affects Religion: Partisanship, Socialization, and Religiosity in America
TL;DR: The authors explored the reverse relationship between partisan identities and political attitudes and behaviors, and found that partisan identities are not strong enough to in fact shape political attitudes or behaviors. But they can shape social identities.
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.