Voting with the Crowd: Do Single Issues Drive Partisanship?

Martin Schmidt

No 57, Working Papers from Department of Economics, College of William and Mary

Abstract: We examine whether survey data supports the anecdotal evidence which suggests that group association impacts the individual’s stated beliefs. Specifically, we examine whether a rise in the relative importance of a single issue, i.e., national security, blurs the traditional importance of socio-economic variables in determining an electorate’s political party association. Further we examine whether such blurring occurs across the responses to questions outside the scope of this single issue. We find that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, the relative importance of national security rose in United States’ electorate and reduced the relative importance of socio-economic variables in determining the electorate’s political association and for both security and non-security issues.

Keywords: Elections; Voting Preferences; Group Preferences; Conformity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E41 E52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2007-09-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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http://economics.wm.edu/wp/cwm_wp57.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Voting with the crowd: do single issues drive partisanship? (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cwm:wpaper:57

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