Abstract
This research stemmed from the growing realization that party ID is not purely the long-term force originally conceptualized. The current conception is that it is a combination of a standing decision and responses to political events. The research addresses two questions: For what proportion of partisan changers is party ID a lagging, stable attachment to be changed only after a period of disaffection from one's party? What is the relative power of the various time 1 short term forces to alter party ID time 2?
Among the short term forces, time 1voting behavior showed the strongest relationship to future change in ID. Criteria were established to identify changers whose change was based in past attitudes or behavior. For these criteria a typology was created to categorize the possible time 1 reasons and motivations for changing partisanship.
The distribution of changers among categories illustrated that past voting behavior is the major instrument of partisan change. Only a small percentage were motivated by attitudes alone. Thus, overall the distribution confirmed the conception of party ID as lagging and stable. However, a substantial minority, 31 percent, showed no prior signs of partisan change.
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Howell, S.E. Short term forces and changing partisanship. Polit Behav 3, 163–180 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00989844
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00989844
Keywords
- Relative Power
- Future Change
- Current Conception
- 1voting Behavior
- Political Event