Partisanship

PARTISANSHIP HAS BECOME the single most important concept in the study of political behavior. Partisanship is a relatively stable and meaningful force that is developed early in life and serves as a guide for organizing political thought. It refers to an attachment or identification with a political party. This identification, again, affects political attitudes and behavior, leading to the second definition: partisanship as voting behavior. Election outcomes are important; the partisan choices voters make, therefore, may be more important than their identification, although identification and behavior are very closely related. Partisanship is also a cognitive tool. Like ideologies, partisanship can ease the intellectual navigation of the political world. Partisanship can also be described in its collective form, the partisan leaning of the nation.

The most widely-accepted use of partisanship as a concept is as a psychological attachment or identification. In this way, partisanship is considered a long-term, stable force that exerts a powerful influence over many aspects of political behavior, including voting and issue positions. As traditionally measured, partisanship has two components. Direction refers to which party an individual identifies with: Democrat or Republican. Absence of direction, or the lack of a preference for one party or the other, manifests itself in Independent identification. Intensity describes how strongly an individual is attached to the party label. The standard measure is either a five- or seven-point scale. In the seven-point version, the continuum ranges from strong Democrat, to weak Democrat, to Independents who lean toward the Democratic Party; in the middle of the scale are pure Independents, then Independents who lean toward the Republican Party, weak Republicans, and strong Republicans.

Demographic characteristics as well as upbringing are the main determinants of partisan identification. The nature of the political world can and does affect partisanship, but once a partisan attachment is formed, it becomes one of the most stable political forces within the individual. Looking first at upbringing, parental party identification very often can lead to similar identification among offspring. Specifically, the more intense the identification of the parents and the more consistent they are in their identification, that is, both parents identify with the same party, the more likely an individual is to share that partisan identity.

Age is also an important factor in partisanship, although age itself can be very misleading. Empirical evidence shows that there are few characteristics inherent in a particular number of years since birth that would lead someone to identify more closely with a party. What is important is an individual's birth year and when the individual came of age, politically speaking. Those coming of age in the 1920s or 1980s, for example, tend to be Republican. Coming of age from the 1930s through the mid-1960s has been closely linked to Democratic identification.

Race is another very important determinant of partisanship. As with voting behavior, there are clear differences between whites and minorities, with African Americans even more distinguishable in their partisanship than other minority groups. Whites tend to be split in their identification, with neither party nor Independent identification holding a majority of individuals. Racial minorities tend to identify more strongly as Democrats, with African Americans the most consistent in their Democratic identification. Research on [Page 484]partisan realignments illustrates a regional realignment occurring throughout the late 1960s until today. Specifically, Republican identification in the south has vastly increased as the Democratic Party has become more liberal. An overwhelmingly Republican citizenry has replaced the solid Democratic south, especially among southern whites.

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