Change in the Structure of American Political Attitudes: The Nagging Question of Question Wording

Bishop, George F.; Tuchfarber, Alfred J.; Oldendick, Robert W.

doi:10.2307/2110616

Cited by 89 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Faced with the more turbulent and engaging politics of the 1960s and 1970s-Vietnam, the civil rights revolution, urban unrest, and so forth-ordinary voters achieved a higher level of coherence (see, among others, Field and Anderson 1969;Nie et al 1979). Critics soon challenged these findings, however, arguing that any observed increases were due to changes in question wording, not elite politics (Bishop et al 1978;Sullivan et al 1978). This criticism largely signaled the end of this line of inquiry for several decades, as scholars turned their attention to other mechanisms for increasing consistency (e.g., core values, question framing, group-centrism, see Kinder 2003).…”

Section: Consistency Since Conversementioning

confidence: 99%

“…If this is the case, what are representatives supposed to represent? Scholars have long debated whether elite polarization does in fact increase voter consistency (contrast, for example, Nie and Andersen 1974;Bishop et al 1978;Layman and Carsey 2002;Gelman 2008). While both sides of this debate have made important contributions to knowledge, all of this literature suffers from a common limitation-they use over-time variation in elite polarization to estimate the effect of polarization on attitude consistency.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Clearer Cues, More Consistent Voters: A Benefit of Elite Polarization

2009

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Scholars typically argue that elite polarization has only negative consequences for American politics. I challenge this view by demonstrating that elite polarization, by clarifying where the parties stand on the issues of the day, causes ordinary voters to adopt more consistent attitudes. Scholars have made such claims in the past, but because only observational data has been available, demonstrating a cause-and-effect relationship has proven to be difficult. I use original experiments to verify that there is a small but significant causal link between elite polarization and voter consistency. These findings have important normative implications for our understanding of the consequences of elite polarization, the role of political parties in a modern democracy, and the standards scholars use to assess citizen competence and participation.Keywords Elite polarization Á Attitude consistency Á Experiment As elites 1 have become steadily more polarized over the past few decades across a host of issues, scholars and popular commentators alike have decried the deleterious consequences for American politics (see, e.g., Eilperin 2006;McCarty et al. 2006;Brownstein 2007). But is there a benefit to elite polarization, an area where its effects are positive rather than negative? This paper argues that elite polarization enhances American politics by increasing attitude consistency in

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Section: Consistency Since Conversementioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Clearer Cues, More Consistent Voters: A Benefit of Elite Polarization

2009

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“…Respondent articulation of the words liberal or conservative in response to the "likes/dislikes" questions used since 1952 in the Survey Research Center (now called Center for Political Studies) American National Election Studies, while the most commonly used measure (Campbell, et al, 1960;Converse, 1964;Repass, 1971;Hagner and Pierce, 1982;Hill and Luttbeg, 1981), does not directly assess the ability of the public to use the words liberal and conservative in a meaningful way. Another method of measuring ideological thinking involves the assessment of "correct" interrelationships between issue positions and other attitudes (McClosky, 1958;Converse, 1964Converse, ,1970, but this method is substantially affected by question wording (Bishop, et al, 1978;Sullivan, et al, 1978). People's willingness to identify themselves as liberal or conservative has also been used, despite doubts concerning whether such self-identification facilitates issue-based voting judgments (Levitin and Miller, 1979;Conover and Feldman, 1981).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Failure of Liberal/Conservative Ideology as a Cognitive Structure

Luttbeg¹,

Gant²

1985

Public Opinion Quarterly

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“…Neither the original collectors of the data, the sponsor of the studies, nor the consortium bears any responsibility for the analysis or interpretations presented here.2 A number of recent works (for example Bishop et al, 1978;Sullivan et a]…”

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confidence: 99%