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★ Appendix A Partisanship in the American Electorate THE MOST IMPORTANT concept in understanding American voters, and consequently campaigns and elections, is partisanship. The purpose of this appendix is to assess both the extent and dynamics of partisanship in the American electorate since 1952, when the first American National Election Study survey was conducted. With the NES surveys from each election since, we now have a continuous series of national surveys that measure, among many other things, partisanship in the electorate over more than half a century. Partisanship is grounded in a psychological identification with a political party. Voters are partisans not because they register as members, or pay dues, or simply like a particular party, or even vote for a party’s candidates. Voters are partisans because they have formed some attachment to, or bond with, a political party. This bond of party identification has been measured since the first NES survey by a set of three branching questions. Survey respondents are first asked the following: “Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an independent, or what?”If the respondent indicates that he or she usually thinks of himself or herself as a Republican or Democrat, he or she is asked: “Would you call yourself a strong Republican [Democrat] or a not very strong Republican [Democrat]?” If the respondent in answering the first question indicates that he or she considers himself or herself an independent , has no preference, or is identified with another party, he or she is asked: “Do you think of yourself as closer to the Republican Party or to the Democratic Party?” From the responses to these three questions, the NES devised a seven-point party identification measure. At each end of the scale are those who identify themselves as strong Democrats or strong Republicans. Working in from these endpoints, those who initially indicate an identification as either a Democrat or a Republican but who say that this identification is “not so strong” are classified as weak Democrats and weak Republicans, respectively. Those who initially indicate that they are independent or have no preference but then say that they regard themselves as usually closer to one of the parties, are coded as leaning Democrats and leaning Republicans. Those who say that they were independents or have no preference and then indicate that they are not closer to one party more than the other are coded at the center of the scale as pure independents. Using this party identification measure, partisanship in the electorate can be measured by the percentage adopting an identification with one of the parties, the strength of that identification, and its use, particularly in deciding how to vote. A highly partisan electorate would be one in which most voters identified strongly with one of the political parties and voted loyally for their party’s candidates. Views of Partisanship How partisan is the American electorate? Research regarding the extent and trends in partisanship has wrestled with this question for some time. The intellectual history of the matter can be roughly summarized as passing through three periods: The American Voter period, the revisionist or issue-voting period , and the restoration of partisanship period (Fiorina 2002). The initial work on partisanship emphasized its importance in the vote choice. The American Voter (A. Campbell et al. 1960), the classic study of voting behavior, established the prevailing view of the American electorate as highly partisan. Most American voters identified in some way with one of the two major political parties, and most party identifiers loyally voted for their party’s presidential candidate. Party identification did not necessarily directly dictate how a voter would vote, but it strongly shaped the various partisan attitudes that spanned vote choice considerations. Partisanship was at the core of what people thought and how they acted politically. This view of the centrality of partisanship was seriously challenged by research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s. The revisionist view of the American voter suggested that The American Voter study was time-bound, a product of the unusual political calm of the 1950s. According to the revisionist view, partisanship was not so all-important to voters. Partisanship itself was often shaped by the issues and vote preferences of the particular campaign, rather than exerting a largely independent eVect on these evaluations. It was not the “unmoved mover” supposed by The American Voter perspective. The independent 214 • appendix...

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