A Good Partisan? Ideology, Loyalty, and Public Evaluations of Members of Congress

Abstract

In recent years, legislators from both parties have drawn attention for their public support or opposition to leading figures within their party, such as Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi. Yet we know relatively little about the extent to which voters care about members' professed loyalty to party leaders, especially when compared to competing considerations such as members' policy positions. In two national survey experiments, we independently manipulate hypothetical Democratic and Republican legislators' ideological reputations and levels of support for a leading party figure. Through our experiments and a supplemental observational analysis, we find that partisans in the electorate do use information about support for or opposition to leading party figures as a basis for evaluating members of Congress. At the same time, the results reaffirm the importance voters attach to policy and ideological factors and suggest these considerations are not overwhelmed by partisan loyalty considerations.

How voters think about the electoral relevance of the Supreme Court

“…High profile behaviors undertaken by the Court, when highlighted in the media, influence perceptions of the institution (Caldeira 1987;Hitt and Searles 2018). That dovetails with more recent evidence that citizens expect members of Congress to behave in ways that are supportive of their party's stereotypical goals (Sheagley et al 2022) and penalize copartisan candidates who violate such expectations (Orr and Huber 2020). However, even with renewed attention to the Court following Dobbs -the most nakedly ideological issue before the Courtperhaps candidate evaluation and support are driven by other considerations like policy itself or basic social and partisan attachments (e.g.…”

“…Curiously, candidates who take group-congruent positions on reforming the Supreme Court are not necessarily rewarded for their trouble. Our survey experiment illustrated that, while support for and opposition to reform shifts voters' perceptions of candidates' ideology, there is only modest affective upside to taking group-congruent positions relative to taking no position at all (although there were significant penalties associated with taking a position that does not align with the stereotypical partisan approach [Sheagley et al 2022]). However, by incorporating the role of diffuse support, we were able to peel back some of the underlying dynamics embedded in these relationships.…”

Diffuse Support, Partisanship, and the Electoral Relevance of the Supreme Court

“…Further, candidates who take group-congruent positions on reforming the Supreme Court are not rewarded for their trouble. Our survey experiment illustrated that, while support for and opposition to reform shifts voters' perceptions of candidates' ideology, there is only modest affective upside to taking group-congruent positions relative to taking no position at all, although there were significant penalties associated with taking a position that does not align with the stereotypical partisan approach (Arceneaux 2008;Sheagley et al 2022).…”

“…High profile behaviors undertaken by the Court, when highlighted in the media, influence perceptions of the institution (Caldeira 1987;Hitt and Searles 2018). That dovetails with more recent evidence that citizens expect members of Congress to behave in ways that are supportive of their party's stereotypical goals (Sheagley et al 2022) and penalize copartisan candidates who violate such expectations (Orr and Huber 2020).…”