Party Identification

Party identification is a term that is used to describe a psychological attachment to a political party. The concept was initially developed by Angus Campbell and his colleagues at the University of Michigan in their landmark studies of voting behavior in U.S. presidential elections in the 1950s. It is at the heart of the social psychological model of electoral choice and became a central concept in the study of public opinion and voting behavior. The Michigan scholars conceptualized party identification as a durable affective loyalty that tends to reinforce itself as it serves as a perceptual filter that screens out information that might weaken it. It is seen as shaping citizens' perceptions of politics, their evaluations of political objects like candidates and issues, and their ...