Groups, Behaviors, and Issues as Cues of Partisan Attachments in the Public

Abstract

What factors do people most associate with the partisan identity of others: group identity, political issue positions, or social behaviors? In this research note, we report the results of a conjoint experiment in which we test the predictive power of descriptive identities against other attributes such as social behaviors and issue positions. We find that when presented with a randomized biography to predict partisanship, people rely on issue positions over descriptive group identities or behaviors. Most issues outperform group affiliations and behaviors, with sexual orientation as the partial exception. We then compared these results to the correlation between the same factors in respondents’ own biographies and their own partisan identification. We find that political issues are far less important to people’s own partisan affiliations, while group identity is more predictive. We conclude that an understanding or perception of ideological concepts and their association with the political parties in others should be distinguished from adoption of such concepts by individuals themselves.