Party Hacks and True Believers: The Effect of Party Affiliation on Political Preferences

Eric Gould and Esteban Klor

No 10562, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

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.

Keywords: Partisanship; Political preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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Journal Article: Party hacks and true believers: The effect of party affiliation on political preferences (2019)
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