Mass Partisan Resurgence and Candidate Polarization

I’m working on a paper discussing the impact of candidate polarization on party’s capacity to predict the vote. Most people think that if candidates polarize, partisanship will seem stronger. I disagree. I discuss why below. I’d love to hear some comments.

Evidence of partisan resurgence exists since the 1960’s and 1970’s among the United States electorate . Particularly, party seems to have a greater capacity to predict the vote now than ever seen in survey data. If true, the long lamented partisan dealignment has ended and a new partisan voter presents itself for analysis. Consider, however, that party’s capacity to predict the vote is partially dependent upon the ideological positions
of the major party candidates in an election. Why is this true? A series of hypotheticals will guide us.

Assume n voters with single-peaked ideological preferences along a unidimensional scale. Assume two parties that are in parity in the electorate; Republicans and Democrats. Most Republicans will be to the ideological right of the median voter while most Democrats will be to its left. Some, in the ideological center, will have ideological preferences that conflict with the traditionally held views of their chosen party. On the scale, for example, a few Republicans will be placed to the left of the median voter while a few Democrats will be placed to its right. I will call these voters cross-partisans. Assume stability in ideological positions and partisan allegiances among voters.

Onto this space, we can place the two major party’s political candidates. Voters will select one of the political candidates based on a calculus that weights ideological preferences and partisan allegiances. The weight given one or the other is likely to change depending on the position of the candidates. To start, take the scenario where both candidates strategically position themselves at the median voter. Voters have no incentive to weight ideological concerns given that the candidates do not differ ideologically. Thus, all weight in the voting calculus is assigned to partisan allegiances. Here, partisanship will be a very strong predictor of the vote.

However, the candidates may, given sincere policy preferences, move closer to their traditional ideological poles; the Democratic candidate moves left while the Republican moves right. Suppose they move symmetrically away from and equidistant to the median voter. Now ideological considerations play a role for voters. For most voters, ideology and partisanship are reinforcing. For cross-partisans, they are not. The vote decisions of these voters is dependent upon how much they weigh one or the other as candidates shift from the median voter. After a small shift, only a small number of cross-partisans may weigh ideology more than partisanship. This will, nonetheless, result in the apparent decline in the capacity for partisanship to predict the vote. As the candidates move further from the median voter and become more extreme, cross-partisans will become increasingly disenchanted with the candidates. They will incur representational loses which will have them assign greater weight to ideology over partisan allegiance. This will make them more likely to cross party lines and vote for the ideologically proximate candidate. In this scenario, also, polarizing candidates should more clearly result in an apparent decline in partisan voting.

Candidates may not, and often do not, polarize symmetrically. Rather, in elections, one party’s candidate may moderate, remain unchanged or polarize while, independently, the other party’s candidate faces the same options. While the partys act independently, these decisions are often made in a dynamic and strategic contexts. For example, the outcome of past elections helps to influence the decision as well as the concurrent activities of the opposed party. What can we say about the apparent strength of partisanship in predicting the vote when only one major party candidate shifts over successive elections while the other does not? Let’s suppose the Republican candidate is just to the right of the Democratic cross-partisans and s/he stays there. The Democratic candidate begins to the left of the Republican cross-partisans but moves left. The baseline result for the apparent predictive power of partisanship depends on how much the cross-partisans weigh ideology and party allegiance. If party allegiance is completely deterministic then party is a perfect predictor of the vote. If ideology plays a role, then some cross-partisans will cross party lines in their vote and the strength of party allegiance will wane. Relative to the resulting baseline (whatever it may be and dependent upon the voting calculus by cross-partisans), what happens as the Democratic candidate shifts left?

At some point, the Republican cross-partisans will have both ideological and partisan incentive to vote Republican. This is the point at which these voters are ideologically closer to the Republican candidate over the Democratic candidate. Now, liberal Democrats along with a shrinking number of Democratic cross-partisans (who weigh party a great deal) are voting Democratic while Republican cross-partisans, most of the Democratic cross-partisans (who are growing more disenchanted with the Democratic candidate for ideological reasons) and conservative Republicans are all voting Republican. The extent to which party seems to strengthen as a predictor of the vote depends upon the ratio between the number of Democratic cross-partisans who were voting Democratic before the candidate’s leftward shift but now vote Republican and the number of Republican cross-partisans that are now voting Republican given the shift. It is likely that such Republicans outnumber such Democrats (because Republican cross-partisans no longer face countervailing ideological and partisan forces while Democratic cross-partisans still do). If true, partisanship will seem to increase somewhat even though no voter changed position. This is in line with the current thinking in political behavior research.

As the Democratic candidate continues to shift leftward, an increasing number of Democrats will have to weigh ideology and partisan allegiance once the Republican candidate is ideologically proximate to them. Now, almost no Democratic cross-partisans vote Democratic and some left leaning Democrats are also settling for the Republican candidate. While the Democratic candidate earns only Democratic votes, the Republican candidates voters include all Republicans and a growing number of Democrats (cross-partisans and otherwise). As the ranks of Republican party voters gets contaminated with Democratic support, partisanship will seem to decline in its capacity to predict the vote. What all this shows, is that, by in large, polarizing candidates should result in an apparent weakening of party’s capacity to predict the vote.

1 thought on “Mass Partisan Resurgence and Candidate Polarization

  1. Joe,

    My quick thought is that you'll want a model where voters can vary in their impressions of where the candidates stand (as in Erikson and Romero (1990), Candidate equilibrium and the behavioral model of the vote, American Political Science Review. Also you're probably more familiar than I am with papers such as Page and Jones (1979), Reciprocal effects of policy preferences, party loyalties and the vote, American Political Science Review.

    Also this reminds me of the stuff in Fiorina et al.'s book about how changing party positions can yield voters to have more polarized views about the parties even if voters' views on issues remain unchanged.

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