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Party hacks and true believers: The effect of party affiliation on political preferences

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  • Gould, Eric D.
  • Klor, Esteban F.

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of party affiliation on an individual's political views. To do this, we exploit the party realignment that occurred in the U.S. due to abortion becoming a more prominent and highly partisan issue over time. We show that abortion was not a highly partisan issue in 1982, but a person's abortion views in 1982 led many to switch parties over time as the two main parties diverged in their stances on this issue. We find that voting for a given political party in 1996, due to the individual's initial views on abortion in 1982, has a substantial effect on a person's political, social, and economic attitudes in 1997. These findings are stronger for highly partisan political issues, and are robust to controlling for a host of personal views and characteristics in 1982 and 1997. As individuals realigned their party affiliation in accordance with their initial abortion views, their other political views followed suit.

Suggested Citation

  • Gould, Eric D. & Klor, Esteban F., 2019. "Party hacks and true believers: The effect of party affiliation on political preferences," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 504-524.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:47:y:2019:i:3:p:504-524
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2019.03.004
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    Cited by:

    1. Gisèle Umbhauer & Arnaud Wolff, 2022. "istance in Beliefs and Individually-Consistent Sequential Equilibrium," Working Papers of BETA 2022-37, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    2. Arnaud Wolff, 2022. "The Signaling Value of Social Identity," Working Papers of BETA 2022-15, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    3. Peter Schwardmann & Egon Tripodi & Joël J. van der Weele, 2019. "Self-Persuasion: Evidence from Field Experiments at Two International Debating Competitions," CESifo Working Paper Series 7946, CESifo.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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