Scholars have long debated the strength of voters’ partisan attachments, asking whether party identification plays a near-deterministic role in political decisions. A large literature argues that partisan cues dominate political choice, but other studies show that competing information can rival, and even sometimes outweigh, the effects of partisanship. We reconcile this conflicting evidence by theorizing that variation in the dominance of partisanship is due to the salience of the other considerations pitted against it. Using survey experiments that characterize the role of partisanship relative to both high and low salience issues, we demonstrate a pattern of “Conditional Party Loyalty.” CONT. – pdf
Jonathan Mummolo (Princeton), Erik Peterson (Texas A&M) & Sean Westwood (Dartmouth)