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Political Awareness, Opinion Constraint and the Stability of Ideological Positions

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  • John Bartle

Abstract

Some studies of public opinion suggest that most people are ignorant about the detail of politics and are simply unable to arrive at a considered vote. They hold that voters are ignorant about the ideological substance of politics, since their opinions do not appear to be constrained by ideas and are unstable over time. However, other studies cast doubt on both the definition of ideology employed in these studies and their operational measures. It is suggested that, once allowance is made for measurement error, the opinions of most voters are constrained and highly stable. This article demonstrates that differences in political awareness result in considerable heterogeneity among the electorate. The opinions of more aware voters are subject to greater constraint and are more stable over time than those of less aware voters. It is therefore suggested that issue‐voting models must be applied with caution to less aware voters.

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  • John Bartle, 2000. "Political Awareness, Opinion Constraint and the Stability of Ideological Positions," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 48(3), pages 467-484, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:polstu:v:48:y:2000:i:3:p:467-484
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-9248.00270
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    Cited by:

    1. Charles J Pattie & Ron J Johnston, 2002. "Political Talk and Voting: Does it Matter to Whom One Talks?," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 34(6), pages 1113-1135, June.
    2. Hurst, Yolander G. & Nation, Denise D., 2009. "The impact of race on criminal justice ideology: An examination of high school students," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 534-541, November.
    3. Franklin G. Mixon & Chandini Sankaran & Kamal P. Upadhyaya, 2019. "Is Political Ideology Stable? Evidence from Long-Serving Members of the United States Congress," Economies, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-19, May.
    4. Baber, Hasnan, 2020. "Intentions to participate in political crowdfunding- from the perspective of civic voluntarism model and theory of planned behavior," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    5. Chris Hanretty & Benjamin E. Lauderdale & Nick Vivyan, 2020. "A Choice‐Based Measure of Issue Importance in the Electorate," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 519-535, July.
    6. Zagidullin, Marat & Aziz, Nergis & Kozhakhmet, Sanat, 2021. "Government policies and attitudes to social media use among users in Turkey: The role of awareness of policies, political involvement, online trust, and party identification," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    7. John Bartle, 2005. "Homogeneous Models and Heterogeneous Voters," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 53(4), pages 653-675, December.
    8. Marlène Gerber & André Bächtiger & Irena Fiket & Marco Steenbergen & Jürg Steiner, 2014. "Deliberative and non-deliberative persuasion: Mechanisms of opinion formation in EuroPolis," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(3), pages 410-429, September.

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