Group Traits or Policy Positions?: Political Parties in American Voters' Minds

Abstract

In my dissertation, I examine (i) how U.S. voters comprehend the terms "Democrat" and "Republican" and (ii) how their understanding of party labels leads to affective polarization. Previous literature on mass partisanship and affective polarization can be divided into two groups. The first group, which I call the group-based view, focuses on demographic and socioeconomic traits in explaining the nature and power of party identification. The other perspective, which I call the issue-based view, argues that voters hold stereotypes about the political parties' policy positions, which also explains the rise of affective polarization. My dissertation aims to compare these two perspectives empirically through secondary analyses of the American National Election Study (ANES) data and original survey experiments. The analyses reported in the empirical chapters find that U.S. voters today associate policy issues more strongly with party labels than group traits and that issue positions better explain the partisan affect than demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Contrary to a recent trend that mainly focuses on social groups, my dissertation contributes to the literature by demonstrating the importance of issue considerations in explaining the nature and power of mass partisanship.