IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v104y2010i04p720-744_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Party Affiliation, Partisanship, and Political Beliefs: A Field Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • GERBER, ALAN S.
  • HUBER, GREGORY A.
  • WASHINGTON, EBONYA

Abstract

Partisanship is strongly correlated with attitudes and behavior, but it is unclear from this pattern whether partisan identity has a causal effect on political behavior and attitudes. We report the results of a field experiment that investigates the causal effect of party identification. Prior to the February 2008 Connecticut presidential primary, researchers sent a mailing to a random sample of unaffiliated registered voters who, in a pretreatment survey, leaned toward a political party. The mailing informed the subjects that only voters registered with a party were able to participate in the upcoming presidential primary. Subjects were surveyed again in June 2008. Comparing posttreatment survey responses to subjects’ baseline survey responses, we find that those reminded of the need to register with a party were more likely to identify with a party and showed stronger partisanship. Further, we find that the treatment group also demonstrated greater concordance than the control group between their pretreatment latent partisanship and their posttreatment reported voting behavior and intentions and evaluations of partisan figures. Thus, our treatment, which appears to have caused a strengthening of partisan identity, also appears to have caused a shift in subjects’ candidate preferences and evaluations of salient political figures. This finding is consistent with the claim that partisanship is an active force changing how citizens behave in and perceive the political world.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerber, Alan S. & Huber, Gregory A. & Washington, Ebonya, 2010. "Party Affiliation, Partisanship, and Political Beliefs: A Field Experiment," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 104(4), pages 720-744, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:104:y:2010:i:04:p:720-744_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055410000407/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lucas, David S. & Park, U. David, 2023. "The nature and origins of social venture mission: An exploratory study of political ideology and moral foundations," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 38(2).
    2. Milner, Mattie & Rice, Stephen & Rice, Connor, 2019. "Support for environmentally-friendly airports influenced by political affiliation and social identity," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    3. Omar Al-Ubaydli & Faith Fatchen & John List, 2024. "Using Field Experiments to Understand the Impact of Institutions on Economic Growth," Natural Field Experiments 00787, The Field Experiments Website.
    4. J Anthony Cookson & Joseph E Engelberg & William Mullins & Hui Chen, 0. "Does Partisanship Shape Investor Beliefs? Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 863-893.
    5. Vivekinan Ashok & Ilyana Kuziemko & Ebonya Washington, 2015. "Support for Redistribution in an Age of Rising Inequality: New Stylized Facts and Some Tentative Explanations," NBER Working Papers 21529, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Barton, Jared & Pan, Xiaofei, 2022. "Movin’ on up? A survey experiment on mobility enhancing policies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    7. Clem Brooks & Elijah Harter, 2021. "Redistribution Preferences, Inequality Information, and Partisan Motivated Reasoning in the United States," Societies, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-16, June.
    8. Heinemann, Friedrich & Janeba, Eckhard & Todtenhaupt, Maximilian, 2022. "Incumbency and expectations of fiscal rule compliance: Evidence from surveys of German policy makers," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    9. Apoorva Lal & Mac Lockhart & Yiqing Xu & Ziwen Zu, 2023. "How Much Should We Trust Instrumental Variable Estimates in Political Science? Practical Advice Based on Over 60 Replicated Studies," Papers 2303.11399, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    10. Fernanda L L de Leon & Renata Rizzi, 2014. "Does Forced Voting Result in Political Polarization?," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 064, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    11. Zeynep Clulow & Michele Ferguson & Peta Ashworth & David Reiner, 2021. "Political ideology and public views of the energy transition in Australia and the UK," Working Papers EPRG2106, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    12. Julie Berry Cullen & Nicholas Turner & Ebonya Washington, 2021. "Political Alignment, Attitudes toward Government, and Tax Evasion," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 135-166, August.
    13. Sjoerd Beugelsdijk & Hester van Herk & Robbert Maseland, 2022. "The Nature of Societal Conflict in Europe; an Archetypal Analysis of the Postmodern Cosmopolitan, Rural Traditionalist and Urban Precariat," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(6), pages 1701-1722, November.
    14. Fernanda Leite Lopez Leon & Renata Rizzi, 2016. "Does forced voting result in political polarization?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 143-160, January.
    15. Arbatli, Cemal Eren & Gomtsyan, David, 2019. "Voting retrospectively: Critical junctures and party identification," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 356-390.
    16. Stephen B. Billings & Eric Chyn & Kareem Haggag, 2021. "The Long-Run Effects of School Racial Diversity on Political Identity," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 267-284, September.
    17. Elizabeth U. Cascio & Na'ama Shenhav, 2020. "A Century of the American Woman Voter: Sex Gaps in Political Participation, Preferences, and Partisanship since Women's Enfranchisement," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 24-48, Spring.
    18. Rogers, Todd & Aida, Masa, 2013. "Vote Self-Prediction Hardly Predicts Who Will Vote, and Is (Misleadingly) Unbiased," Working Paper Series rwp13-010, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    19. Kai Jäger, 2020. "When Do Campaign Effects Persist for Years? Evidence from a Natural Experiment," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 836-851, October.
    20. Seth J. Hill & Chris Tausanovitch, 2018. "Southern realignment, party sorting, and the polarization of American primary electorates, 1958–2012," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 107-132, July.
    21. Joshua Robison & Randy T. Stevenson & James N. Druckman & Simon Jackman & Jonathan N. Katz & Lynn Vavreck, 2018. "An Audit of Political Behavior Research," SAGE Open, , vol. 8(3), pages 21582440187, August.
    22. Miles S. Kimball & Collin B. Raymond & Jiannan Zhou & Junya Zhou & Fumio Ohtake & Yoshiro Tsutsui, 2024. "Happiness Dynamics, Reference Dependence, and Motivated Beliefs in U.S. Presidential Elections," NBER Working Papers 32078, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:104:y:2010:i:04:p:720-744_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.