What Goes with Red and Blue? Mapping Partisan and Ideological Associations in the Minds of Voters
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What Goes with Red and Blue? Mapping Partisan and Ideological Associations in the Minds of Voters Stephen N. Goggin1 · John A. Henderson2 · Alexander G. Theodoridis3
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract To what extent do voters grasp “what goes with what” among key political objects as they attempt to understand the choices they face at the ballot box? Is recognition of these associations limited to only the most informed citizens? We design a novel conjoint classification experiment that minimizes partisan boosting and allows for the relative comparison of attribute effect when mapping voter associative networks, the cluster of attributes linked to parties and ideological labels. We ask respondents to ‘guess’ the party or ideology of hypothetical candidates with fully randomized issue priorities and biographical details. There is remarkable agreement among both high- and low-knowledge voters in linking issues to each party and ideology, suggesting this minimalist form of associative competence is more widely held in the mass public than perhaps previously thought. We find less agreement about biographical traits, which appear to pose greater informational challenges for voters. Notably, nearly identical issue priorities and traits are associated with party and ideology, indicating these two dimensions are largely fused in the minds of today’s American voters. Keywords Partisanship · Voter competence · Experiment · Ideology · Survey methods · Political sophistication For valuable comments we thank Doug Ahler, Henry Brady, Jack Citrin, Jacob Hacker, Greg Huber, Jeff Jenkins, Travis Johnston, Katherine Krimmel, Gabe Lenz, Steve Nicholson, Jas Sekhon, Eric Schickler, Kim Twist, and Rob Van Houweling, as well as workshop participants at the University of Virginia, Northwestern University and Syracuse University, and attendees at the CCES Sundance Conference and the ISPS Summer Workshop. All errors are our responsibility. This work was funded by generous research support from the University of California, Merced and Yale University, and supported by the National Science Foundation, Award #1430505. Replication materials are available here: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RDQZUM. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1110 9-018-09525-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Alexander G. Theodoridis [email protected] http://www.alexandertheodoridis.com Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Political Behavior
Introduction Increasingly, simpler forms of information about ‘what goes with what’ (or even information about the simple identity of objects) turn up missing (Converse 1964, p. 213). Partisan stereotypes are rich cognitive categories, containing not only policy information but group alliances, trait judgments, specific examples of group members, and performance assessments (Rahn 1993, p. 474). To what extent do vo
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