April 5, 2018

Partisanship as Stable Self-Identity

  • "However party and religious identifications come about, once they take root in early adulthood, they often persist. Partisan identities are enduring features of citizens’ self-conceptions." (Green, Palmquist & Schickler, 2002)

Partisans are Loyal to their Party

  • In 21st century elections, 90% of Republicans support their party's Presidential candidate

  • During Watergate, majority of Republicans supported Nixon (dipped below 50% twice)

  • Last month, 83% of Republicans approved of President Trump's job performance

The Folk Theory of Partisan Stability

  • American political behavior is usually assumed to be time-invariant

  • "Extraordinary durability of voting habits" (Key, 1949)

  • Implicit in idea of "The Normal Vote" (Converse, 1964)

  • "[Absent realignments], as with religion, people are often adherents of a particular political party because their great-grandparents favored it for entirely different reasons" (Achen & Bartels, 2016)

My Contributions

  • First individual-level dataset covering period before the New Deal

  • High levels of partisan instability were the norm from 1908 to 1936

  • Realignment characterized by mass conversion of Republicans into Democrats

  • Partisan stability began abruptly in 1936

  • Classic theories of socialization don't explain heterogeneities in party stability before 1930

The Slide into Stable Partisanship

Conclusions

  • New data makes historical political behavior tractable

  • Individual partisanship less stable before 1936

  • Instability was hidden by stable macropartisanship

  • Era of partisan stability began with New Deal realignment

  • Socialization theory doesn't hold pre-realignment

  • Shouldn't treat features of American political behavior ahistorically