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The Big Five Personality Traits and Partisanship in England

Author

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  • Toke Aidt
  • Christopher Rauh

Abstract

We propose a new framework for the study of the psychological foundation of party identification. We draw a distinction between the part of an individual’s party preference that is stable throughout adult life and the dynamic part responding to lifecycle events and macro shocks. We theorize that the Big Five personality traits exert a causal effect on the stable part of an individual’s party preference and provide evidence from a large nationally representative English panel dataset in support of this theory. We find that supporters of the major parties (Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats) have substantively different personality traits. Moreover, we show that those not identifying with any party, who are close to holding the majority, are similar to those identifying with the Conservatives. We show that these results are robust to controlling for cognitive skills and parental party preferences, and to estimation on a subsample of siblings. The relationship between personality traits and party identification is stable across birth cohorts.

Suggested Citation

  • Toke Aidt & Christopher Rauh, 2017. "The Big Five Personality Traits and Partisanship in England," CESifo Working Paper Series 6732, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6732
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    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp6732.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    6. Denny, Kevin & Doyle, Orla, 2008. "Political Interest, Cognitive Ability and Personality: Determinants of Voter Turnout in Britain," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(2), pages 291-310, April.
    7. Brown, Sarah & Taylor, Karl, 2014. "Household finances and the ‘Big Five’ personality traits," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 197-212.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Kauder, Björn & Potrafke, Niklas & Reischmann, Markus, 2016. "Do politicians reward core supporters? Evidence from a discretionary grant program," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 39-56.
    2. Sarah Brown & Karl Taylor, 2019. "Charitable Behaviour and Political Ideology: Evidence for the UK," Working Papers 2019002, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    3. Kauder, Björn & Potrafke, Niklas & Ursprung, Heinrich, 2018. "Behavioral determinants of proclaimed support for environment protection policies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 26-41.
    4. Kauder, Björn & Björn, Kauder & Niklas, Potrafke & Markus, Reischmann, 2016. "Do politicians gratify core supporters? Evidence from a discretionary grant program," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145509, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Toke Aidt & Christopher Rauh, 2019. "The Rise of the 'No Party' in England," CESifo Working Paper Series 7812, CESifo.
    6. Markus Reischmann, 2016. "Empirische Studien zu Staatsverschuldung und fiskalischen Transferzahlungen," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 63.
    7. Toke Aidt & Christopher Rauh, 2019. "The Rise of the 'No Party' in England," CESifo Working Paper Series 7812, CESifo.
    8. Lacroix, Jean & Méon, Pierre-Guillaume & Oosterlinck, Kim, 2019. "A Positive Effect of Political Dynasties: the Case of France's 1940 Enabling Act," CEPR Discussion Papers 13871, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Harry Pickard, 2019. "A mailshot in the dark? The impact of the UK government's lea fet on the 2016 EU referendum," Working Papers 2019004, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Big Five personality traits; party identification; partisanship; England;

    JEL classification:

    • D79 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Other

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