Download Ideological Realignment in Contemporary American Politics: The

Ideological Realignment in Contemporary American Politics:
The Case of Party Activists
Geoffrey C. Layman
Department of Political Science
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37235
[email protected]
and
Thomas M. Carsey
Department of Political Science
University of Illinois-Chicago
Chicago, IL 60607
[email protected]
Prepared for Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science
Association, Chicago, April 27-30, 2000
Ideological Realignment in Contemporary American Politics: The Case of Party Activists
A number of recent studies address the phenomenon of “ideological realignment” in the
American political party system: specifically, a growing relationship between liberal-conservative
ideology and partisanship and a growing ideological divide between Democratic and Republican
elites and between the parties’ coalitions in the mass electorate. From an elite-level perspective,
studies of the roll-call voting and other activities of members of Congress demonstrate growing
ideological divisions between Republicans and Democrats and growing ideological homogeneity
within the congressional parties (Poole and Rosenthal 1984; Rohde 1991; Aldrich 1995; Collie and
Mason 1999). From the perspective of the mass electorate, scholars show that in recent decades the
Democratic party has become an increasingly attractive political home for ideological liberals while
the ranks of the Republican party have been infiltrated increasingly by ideological conservatives
(Carmines and Stanley 1990, 1992; Levine, Carmines, and Huckfeldt 1997; Abramowitz and
Saunders 1998; Fiorina 1999). This research demonstrates that political ideology has become more
important, relative to factors such as social structure and retrospective performance evaluations, as a
defining feature of mass-level partisanship.
Our own recent research on the parties in the electorate supports the general notion of
ideological realignment (Layman and Carsey 1999). However, we contend that the approach to
partisan ideological polarization taken by much of the ideological realignment research is
oversimplified. It conceives of ideology as a unidimensional construct and employs unidimensional
indicators–whether they be liberal-conservative self-identification scales (Levine, Carmines, and
Huckfeldt 1997) or additive indices of self-identification and attitudes on multiple policy issues
(Abramowitz and Saunders 1998)–to operationalize ideology.1 Such an approach may well have
been appropriate in the 1950s when the social welfare and role of government issues that arose with
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal remained the dominant issues in American politics, at least in
terms of domestic policy. Since then, however, at least two new dimensions of domestic issues have
emerged and divided the electorate in ways that are new and different from the cleavage created by
the New Deal issues.
The early 1960s witnessed the emergence of issues of racial equality and the polarization of
the parties’ candidates and office-holders on those issues. Those developments helped to split the
Democratic party’s “New Deal” coalition by pushing working-class and southern whites who had
supported the party’s economic activism, but despised its newfound racial liberalism, toward
independence and Republicanism (Carmines and Stimson 1989; Black and Black 1987). In the late
1960s and early 1970s, there arose a third type of domestic policy issues: moral and cultural issues
like abortion, women’s rights, homosexual rights, and the place of religion in the public schools.
Whereas racial issues center on a question very similar to that of the New Deal issues–the role of
government in promoting equality–cultural issues involve very different philosophical orientations.
1
One exception to this is the analysis by Stone, Rapoport, and Abramowitz (1990) of party polarization in
the 1980s. These authors do not explicitly conceptualize ideology as multidimensional, but they do examine
polarization on issues from several different policy agendas.
2
On these issues, it is the conservatives who favor government activism, here to promote traditional
moral norms, while the liberals support a more limited role for government. Consequently, groups
that are conservative on social welfare issues, like young upper-status professionals, are often liberal
on cultural issues, and groups that are liberal on social welfare issues, like lower-status whites and
even African-Americans, are often conservative on cultural issues (Layman 2000).
Given the way in which the two newer domestic policy agendas cut across the partisan,
socioeconomic, and attitudinal cleavages created by the New Deal issues, it is not surprising that
scholars find that the underlying structure of American political ideology is not unidimensional, but
multidimensional, with voters having distinct attitudes toward social welfare, racial, and cultural
issues (Knoke 1979; Abramowitz 1994; Carmines and Layman 1997). In our research, we find some
evidence that citizens’ views on social welfare and racial issues now may form a single attitudinal
dimension. Attitudes on cultural issues, however, remain clearly distinct from other policy
orientations (Layman and Carsey 1999).
Our argument, in short, is that what is unique about recent American politics is not
ideological polarization. All periods of partisan change are characterized by an increase in partisan
polarization along the lines of some ideological dimension. What is unique is that the parties have
become increasingly polarized on multiple, cross-cutting issue dimensions. The conventional
wisdom in the literature on issue-driven partisan change is that that should not happen. By this view,
realignments are characterized by “conflict displacement.” The old issues that previously dominated
party conflict are replaced by a new set of dominant issues, and while the parties grow more
polarized on the new issues, they become less polarized on the old issues (Schattschneider 1960;
Sundquist 1983; Carmines and Stimson 1989). However, we find that over the last three decades, the
Democratic and Republican parties in the electorate have become increasingly polarized not just on
the new cultural issues or the relatively new racial issues, but also on the old role of government and
social welfare issues (Layman and Carsey 1999). Recent party politics has witnessed not conflict
displacement, but the polarization of the parties’ mass coalitions along multiple ideological
dimensions: a process we refer to as general ideological polarization.
In this paper, we focus on general ideological polarization among Democratic and
Republican party activists. We do so because party activists are a driving force in the partisan
change process. Activists often bring new issues into party politics (Carmines & Stimson 1989);
they exert substantial influence on the selection of party candidates and the drafting of party
platforms (Miller & Jennings 1986; Aldrich 1995); and they serve as "opinion leaders" in their local
communities, playing a crucial role in shaping the images that the mass public forms of the parties'
policy stances (Carmines & Stimson, 1989; Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954). Studies of
partisan change on a single ideological dimension suggest that activists not only play a key role in
linking elite polarization and the polarization of the parties in the electorate, but also serve as a
catalyst for the elite polarization itself (Carmines and Stimson 1989; Layman 2000).
There are a number of reasons why party activists may play a particularly important role in
the general ideological polarization of the parties. First, the growing polarization of the parties’
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elites and identifiers on multiple policy dimensions has taken shape over a period–the 1970s to the
present–in which the parties’ nominating processes have been highly participatory. In this
nominating process, candidates are no longer selected by party leaders and elected officials, but by
the activists who participate in the parties’ primaries and caucuses. This role in candidate selection
gives party activists considerable influence over not only the types of candidates who win party
nominations, but also the types of candidates who seek party nominations and the policy stands
associated with the parties.
Second, there is a wide body of literature demonstrating that activists have more
ideologically-extreme policy attitudes than ordinary voters (cf. Verba and Nie 1972; Carmines and
Stimson 1989; Aldrich 1995; Fiorina 1999). Moreover, the conventional wisdom is that party
activists have become increasingly “purposive” or “purist” in their political behavior and less
pragmatic and partisan (Wilson 1962; Conway and Feigert 1968; Roback 1980; Aldrich 1995). In
other words, they are driven increasingly by their highly-liberal or highly-conservative ideological
goals and are less likely to compromise on their policy positions for the sake of party victory or
attaining material benefits. When party activists have greater influence over the selection of party
candidates and the drafting of party platforms, and the ranks of party activists are becoming
populated more by political amateurs and less by political professionals or pragmatists, it is no
wonder that the parties’ ideologies are growing increasingly distinct.
Of particular relevance for multidimensional ideological polarization may be the rise of
“single-issue” activists: individuals whose overarching political concern is a particular issue or
group of issues and who are unwilling to accept more moderate stands on that issue for the sake of
partisan victory or achieving other policy goals (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). When a party
is populated by ideologically-extreme single-issue activists, the rational strategy of candidates for the
party’s nominations may be to take non-centrist positions on all major issues. Assume, for example,
that there are only three major issues in American politics–abortion, welfare spending, and
affirmative action–and that the Republican activist base is equally divided into three single-issue
groups: one that is primarily concerned with abortion, one concerned with welfare, and one
concerned with affirmative action. All three groups have highly-conservative positions on their
particular issues, but may be more moderate on the two issues that are less salient to them. In this
case, the rational candidate for a Republican nomination would take very conservative stands on all
three issues. If she takes a moderate stand on any one of the issues, she alienates the bloc of activists
focused on that issue. And, she does not gain much support from those activists who are focused on
the other issues and have more moderate views on this particular issue because they do not care
about this issue. Their only concern is that the candidate take a highly-conservative position on their
issue. The end result should be that most candidates, and thus the party, take very conservative
stands on all issues.
In fact, John Aldrich (1983b) alludes to this in his spatial account of party activism in a
multidimensional issue space. He shows that if Sundquist’s (1983) realignment assumptions that the
new issue dimension becomes more salient than the old dimension and the two dimensions are cross4
cutting hold true, then the parties will diverge on the new issues, but converge to the same position
on the old issues. However, if both the old and the new issue dimensions are important to certain
groups of people, so that there are large concentrations of individuals divided along the old
dimension and large concentrations divided along the new dimension, then it is entirely possible that
the parties will be polarized along both sets of issues (Aldrich 1983b: 95-96).
The third reason why activists may be key to general ideological polarization is that they tend
to have higher levels of ideological sophistication than ordinary citizens. Activists are more likely
than non-activists to use ideological labels in their political evaluations and to understand the
meaning of those labels (Herrera 1992). In other words, activists are more likely than their fellow
citizens to structure their political outlooks along the lines of abstract liberal and conservative
ideologies. Thus, there should be more ideological constraint in their policy positions. Activists
should be more likely than non-activists to understand the political and partisan connections between
social welfare, racial, and cultural issues and thus to have positions on them that are consistently
liberal or consistently conservative. Ideologically-consistent activists should help to create
ideologically-consistent parties.
The analysis in this paper takes shape in three steps. First, we assess whether or not the level
of polarization between Democratic and Republican activists on different types of policy issues has
grown over time. In doing so, we compare both the level and growth of activist polarization to the
same quantities for non-activists who identify with the Democratic and Republican parties. Second,
we examine the sources of general ideological polarization, identifying some of the factors that
distinguish Democratic and Republican activists who have consistently liberal and consistently
conservative positions, respectively, on domestic issues from their less ideologically-consistent and
extreme fellow partisans. Third, we consider the process through which general ideological
polarization among activists has taken shape. We focus particularly on two processes: activist
replacement or circulation and the conversion of individual activists to more polarized positions on
one or more issue dimensions.
Ideological Polarization Among Activists and Non-Activists
Figure 1 employs the presidential-year National Election Studies (NES) from 1972 to 1996 to
examine changing levels of polarization between Democratic and Republican activists and nonactivists.2 It shows the level of party polarization on the liberal-conservative identification scale, on
the four issues–government’s responsibility to guarantee citizens a good job and standard of living,
2
Activists are defined as those individuals who engage in three or more of the following six campaign
activities: voting, working for a party or candidate, trying to influence others’ votes, going to political meetings or
rallies, wearing a campaign button or putting a campaign sticker on one’s car or a sign in one’s yard, and giving
money to a party or candidate (see Carmines and Stimson 1989; Fiorina 1999 for similar operational definitions of
activists). This group typically constitutes about five-to-10 percent of the NES sample. Non-activists are those
respondents who engage in two or fewer of the activities.
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abortion, government’s responsibility to help African-Americans, and the role of women in society–
that were included in each of the presidential-year NES surveys, and on one issue, government
provision of health insurance, that was asked in all but one of the surveys.3 It also shows the level of
party polarization on a scale of social welfare conservatism, created by summing respondents’
positions on government guarantee of jobs, government help for blacks, and government-sponsored
health insurance, and a scale of cultural conservatism, created by summing respondents’ positions on
abortion and women’s role.4
As expected, activists are almost always more polarized, on liberal-conservative
identification and on all issues, than are Democratic and Republican non-activists. More
importantly, there is clear evidence of increasing party polarization on every one of these measures.
Given the findings of the ideological realignment literature, it is not surprising that party polarization
has grown on the liberal-conservative scale. And, given the evidence that abortion and other cultural
issues have recently evolved from non-partisan issues into issues of clear partisan division (Adams
1997; Layman 2000), it is not surprising that there is a noticeable growth in party polarization on
abortion, women’s role, and the cultural attitudes scale.
But, it may be surprising that party polarization has increased on the issues that concern the
role of government in promoting economic and racial equality. These are issues that have been on
the political agenda for a relatively long time and on which Democratic and Republican platforms
and elected officials have long staked out clearly different positions. According to the conflictdisplacement hypothesis, these are the very issues on which the parties’ coalitions should converge
as they become more polarized on the new cultural issues. In fact, Carmines and Stimson (1989)
provide an empirical demonstration of conflict displacement with the exact issue that is in the middle
of the first row of the figure: government guarantee of jobs. They show that as the parties became
more polarized on civil rights issues in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, there was a clear
3
All issues have been placed on a zero-to-one scale and all range from the most liberal positions to the
most conservative positions. Polarization is the Republican mean minus the Democratic mean. The wording of the
response options to the abortion question changed between 1976 and 1980. However, since we focus on party
differences and not absolute levels of pro- or anti-abortion sentiments, that should not greatly affect our results.
4
We conducted principal components factor analyses of the five issues shown in figure 1 in each
presidential-election year from 1976 to 1996 (only four issues were included in 1980). In each year, the analysis
yielded two factors with eigenvalues greater than one. And, in each year, the three social welfare issues–
government guarantee of jobs, government help for blacks, and government health insurance–loaded strongly (.5 or
above) on the first factor and the two cultural issues–abortion and women’s role–loaded strongly on the second
factor. The scales could not be constructed for 1972 because the 1972 NES used several different question forms,
containing different sets of issue questions, for different groups of respondents. The result is that there are no
common observations for particular pairs of issues.
Of course, other analyses have yielded separate racial dimensions (Abramowitz 1994; Carmines and
Layman 1997) and there has been a good deal of research treating racial issues as a policy dimension separate from
social welfare (cf. Carmines and Stimson 1989). However, there is also evidence that racial attitudes and social
welfare attitudes are closely related and have become more so over time (Carmines and Stimson 1989; Sniderman
and Piazza 1993).
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depolarization of the Democratic and Republican coalitions on the government guarantee of jobs
issue. But, since 1972, there has been a noticeable party divergence on this issue, as well as on the
question of government help for African-Americans and government provision of health insurance.
There has not been a conflict displacement in recent American politics. There has been a general
ideological polarization.
Finally, and most importantly for this paper, the growth of party polarization among activists
is in many cases sharper than the growth of party differences among non-activists. That is most
clearly the case on abortion, women’s role, and the cultural attitudes scale. But, there is also
evidence for sharper party divergence among activists than among non-activists on the government
guarantee of jobs issue and on the social welfare scale. It is clear that Democratic and Republican
activists have grown more ideologically polarized along multiple policy dimensions. It also appears
that they may have played a leading role in pushing the parties toward greater ideological divergence.
Figure 1 shows increasing activist polarization on both social welfare and cultural issues, but
it does not indicate whether Republican activists have become more likely, as a group, to be
conservative on both issue dimensions while Democratic activists have grown more likely to be
liberal on both. We address that by trichotomizing the social welfare and cultural scales into liberal,
moderate, and conservative categories and identifying the groups of activists that are in each possible
combination of those categories on the two types of issues. The percentage of Democratic and
Republican activists holding those attitude combinations from 1976 through 1996 is shown in figure
2.
The percentage of Democratic activists holding liberal views on both social welfare and
cultural issues increased sharply between 1976 and 1984 and remained very high through the 1980s
and 1990s. The presence of Democratic activists with moderate attitudes on both dimensions
decreased substantially between 1976 and 1992 and remained low in 1996. There was also a
noticeable decline between 1980 and 1996 in the percentage of Democrats with moderate social
welfare views and conservative cultural views.
The patterns are even clearer on the Republican side as the presence of activists crosspressured on social welfare and cultural issues declined noticeably over these two decades. There
was a sharp drop-off in the percentage of Republican activists with moderate positions on social
welfare and liberal views on cultural matters as well as in the presence of social welfare
conservatives and cultural liberals. Meanwhile, the ranks of GOP activists has become populated
increasingly by individuals with conservative views on both issue dimensions. In short, the evidence
for general ideological polarization among party activists is clear. A clear plurality of Democratic
activists are liberal on both of the major domestic policy agendas and a near majority of Republican
activists are across-the-board conservatives.
Explaining General Ideological Polarization: The Correlates of Consistent Liberalism and
Consistent Conservatism
Given that Democratic and Republican activists have grown increasingly polarized on both
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cultural and social welfare issues (as well as racial issues if the issue of government help for AfricanAmericans is any indication), the next question is why? Why have Democratic activists become, in
the aggregate, more consistently liberal while Republican activists have grown more consistently
conservative? To answer this, we consider two more specific questions. The first focuses on the
factors leading to ideological consistency among individual activists and asks what distinguishes
consistently liberal Democrats and consistently conservative Republicans from their fellow partisans.
We address that in this section by identifying several variables that should produce consistent
liberalism among Democrats and consistent conservatism among Republicans and examining their
impact on activists’ social welfare and cultural attitudes with data from the 1992 Convention
Delegate Study (CDS).5 The second focuses on overall party polarization on both the social welfare
and cultural dimensions and asks what the aggregate-level processes that produced this polarization
are. We address that in the next section with panel and cross-sectional data from the 1984 and 1988
CDS surveys.6
There are a number of factors that should contribute to individual Democratic activists
having liberal views on both social welfare and cultural issues and to individual Republican activists
being consistently conservative on these issues. These include the activists’ abstract ideological
orientations, the factors that motivate their political participation and the length of that participation,
the policy positions of the candidates that they support, the political context in their home states, and
their religious orientations and education levels.
Ideological Identification. A vast body of research shows that the identification of
individuals with abstract liberal and conservative ideologies has a substantial impact on their policy
preferences (cf. Erikson and Tedin 1995). This impact should be particularly strong for political
activists since they are more likely than ordinary citizens to understand ideological labels and to use
them to structure their political thinking (Herrera 1992). Thus, Democrats who identify themselves
as being very liberal should bring their views on social welfare and cultural issues into line with this
ideology and be more likely than other Democrats to have liberal positions on both issue dimensions.
Republicans who identify themselves as being very conservative should be more likely than their
fellow partisans to have conservative positions on both sets of issues.
Purpose and Length of Activism. Scholars have distinguished between three sets of factors
that motivate political involvement: purposive incentives that relate to the advancement of a
particular political cause or ideology; social, solidary incentives such as personal satisfaction from
politics, making friends, or feeling part of a group; and material incentives such as making business
5
The 1992 CDS surveyed 1,858 Democratic delegates and 995 Republican delegates to the 1992 national
conventions and was conducted by Warren E. Miller and Richard Herrera. The 1992 CDS is the most recent CDS
survey as none was conducted in 1996. It also is the most recent academic survey of party activists nationwide (at
least that is publicly available).
6
The 1984 and 1988 CDS surveys were conducted by Warren Miller and M. Kent Jennings. See Herrera
(1992, 1995) for details about the panel and cross-sectional components of these surveys.
8
contacts or holding political office (Clarke and Wilson 1961; Conway and Feigert 1968; Roback
1980). Most activists are motivated by all of these goals to some extent, but tend to attach more
importance to some goals than to others (Miller and Jennings 1986).
Activists who are motivated primarily by purposive, ideological goals should be more likely
than activists driven principally by material and solidary goals to hold ideologically-extreme views
on both social welfare and cultural issues. Since their main reason for being involved in a party is to
further a particular ideological agenda, purposive activists are unlikely to support centrist,
compromise positions on that agenda for the sake of party victory. In contrast, many of the goals of
materially- and socially-oriented activists–for example, getting a government job or attending a
presidential inauguration–are contingent upon the party winning elections, which may be more likely
if it takes centrist policy positions. Moreover, since the political incentives of purposive activists are
inherently ideological, they should be more likely than other activists to have ideologicallyconsistent issue positions.
We measure activist motivation using questions from the 1992 CDS regarding the importance
of twelve different political incentives. In our earlier research (Layman and Carsey 1998), we
identify five of the incentives–strong attachment to party, friendships and social contacts with people
in politics, politics as a way of life, the fun and excitement of conventions and campaigns, and
personal friends and family members being active in the party–as solidary, four of the incentives–the
visibility and responsibility of party work, the feeling of being close to people who are doing
important work, having a personal career in politics, and making business or professional contacts–as
material, and three of the incentives–getting the party and its candidates to support certain policies,
fulfilling civic responsibility, and wanting to see particular candidates elected–as purposive. This
classification follows the typologies of other scholars (Roback 1980; Constantini and King 1984;
Miller, Jewell, and Sigelman 1987) and is supported by a principal-components factor analysis of the
12 incentives in the 1992 CDS.7 The measure we employ is an index of the importance of purposive
incentives relative to solidary and material incentives. It is formed by taking the difference between
the mean importance that respondents attach to the three purposive incentives and the mean
importance they attach to the nine solidary and material incentives.
Another factor that may related to the likelihood of being consistently liberal or consistently
conservative on social welfare and cultural issues is length of activism. Since cultural issues have
been issues of partisan cleavage for a relatively short time, individuals who have been active in party
politics for a relatively long time may be less likely than individuals newer to party activity to share
the ideologically-extreme cultural views of their party’s candidates and platforms. Veteran activists
may be more likely than their less-experienced counterparts to have been drawn into a party only by
its stands on social welfare issues and not by its stands on cultural issues. Moreover, the increased
divergence of the parties on both social welfare and cultural issues is a relatively recent phenomenon.
7
This analysis yielded only three factors with eigenvalues greater than one. The five solidary incentives
loaded strongly (.40 or greater) on the first factor, the four material incentives loaded strongly on the second factor,
and the three purposive incentives loaded strongly on the third factor.
9
So, whether the influx of new activists into the parties has driven it or responded to it, newer activists
should be more likely than more-experienced activists to share their party’s non-centrist positions on
both issue dimensions. Length of activism is simply the number of years an individual has been
involved in party politics.
Group Memberships. Extensive research demonstrates that individuals’ attitudes are shaped
by the social and political contexts within which they find themselves (cf. Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and
McPhee 1954; Putnam 1966; Huckfeldt and Sprague 1987). Thus, the types of social and political
groups to which an activist belongs should affect the combination of attitudes he or she holds on
social welfare and cultural issues. The 1992 CDS asked respondents if they belonged to a number of
different groups and nine of those groups are likely to be associated with distinctive attitudes on
social welfare and cultural issues.
Of those nine, two of the groups–teacher’s unions and labor unions–would seem to be in the
category of “old left” groups: groups traditionally associated with the Democratic party and social
welfare liberalism. Membership in these groups should be related to liberal attitudes on social
welfare issues, but, given their association with an older line of political cleavage, may not be
associated with liberal views on the newer cultural issues. Four of the groups–women’s groups, prochoice groups, environmental groups, and civil liberties groups–fit the mold of “new left” groups:
groups associated with liberal positions on issue agendas like women’s rights, minority rights,
abortion rights, and environmental protection that emerged on the political scene in the 1960s and
1970s. Membership in these groups clearly should be associated with cultural liberalism. It also
should be related to social welfare liberalism because new left groups, though not focused primarily
on social welfare policy, do tend to be supportive of economic and racial equality and the
redistribution of income. Finally, three of the groups–politically-active religious groups,
conservative women’s groups, and pro-life groups–are properly classified as “new right” groups:
groups associated with conservative positions on the moral and cultural issues that arose in the 1960s
and 1970s. There is no question that membership in these groups should be related to cultural
conservatism. Since the Christian Right and other culturally-conservative groups tend to be very
supportive of conservative economic policies, it also may be associated with social welfare
conservatism.8 The variables used in our analysis are the number of old left group memberships, the
number of new left group memberships, and the number of new right group memberships held by
respondents.
Candidate Preferences. Although all presidential candidates have the incentive to take issue
positions favored by a majority of their party’s activists, noticeable differences remain in their policy
stands. Since the candidate preferences of many activists are policy-based and because many
8
A principal-components factor analysis of memberships in these nine groups confirms our classification.
The analysis yielded three factors with eigenvalues greater than one. Membership in teacher’s unions and labor
unions loaded strongly (.60 or greater) on one factor. Membership in women’s groups, pro-choice groups,
environmental groups, and civil liberties groups loaded strongly on another factor. Membership in politically-active
religious groups, conservative women’s groups, and pro-life groups loaded strongly on a third factor.
10
individuals, particularly politically attentive ones, bring their political views into line with those of
the candidates and political leaders whom they support (Zaller 1992; McCann 1995), we expect
preferences for different candidates for the parties’ presidential nominations to be associated with
different combinations of social welfare and cultural attitudes.
For Democratic activists, our analysis includes dummy variables for the supporters of four of
the major candidates for the 1992 Democratic nomination–Tom Harkin, Jerry Brown, Paul Tsongas,
and Bob Kerry–and uses supporters of Bill Clinton as the comparison category. We expect that the
activists who differ the most from Clinton supporters are those who favored Harkin and Tsongas.
Harkin has long been associated with highly-liberal positions on nearly all issues, and his 1992
campaign highlighted his concern for the working class and his social welfare liberalism. So, his
supporters may have more liberal views than supporters of the more-moderate Clinton on both issue
dimensions, but particularly on social welfare issues. Meanwhile, the economic stands taken by Paul
Tsongas in 1992 were, by Democratic standards, rather conservative and pro-business, but his
positions on moral and cultural issues were quite liberal. His supporters should be more likely to be
moderate on social welfare issues, but liberal on cultural issues than are those activists who preferred
Bill Clinton.
There were only two candidates–George Bush and Pat Buchanan–for the Republican
presidential nomination in 1992 and Bush was the preferred candidate of over 90 percent of the
Republican delegates responding to the 1992 CDS. Because of Buchanan’s very limited support, we
could not estimate our model with a dummy variable for his supporters.9 So, instead we take
advantage of the feeling thermometer ratings of Buchanan and Bush in the survey and measure
candidate preferences as the difference between respondents’ ratings of Buchanan and their ratings of
Bush. Buchanan has long been associated with highly-conservative issue positions, particularly on
cultural matters, while Bush was a leading standard bearer for moderate conservatism.10 As
activists’ thermometer ratings of Buchanan relative to Bush increase, they should become more
likely to hold conservative attitudes on both social welfare and cultural issues.
State Political Context. As we have noted, the political and social environment faced by a
political activist should shape the views they hold on policy issues. In addition to group
membership, another important way in which that environment may vary is by state.11 Democratic
9
As we allude to later, we test our hypotheses about activists social welfare and cultural attitudes with
multinomial logit analyses using four-category dependent variables. The dummy variable for Buchanan supporters
perfectly predicted two of the four categories because there were no Buchanan supporters in those categories.
10
In his 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns, Buchanan has espoused a populist economic agenda that is
somewhat anti-corporate and pro-labor. As best as we can recall, that economic populism was not as evident in his
1992 campaign.
11
Of course, there are significant variations in political context within states. However, a number of
scholars show that there are important political differences between states and that these differences have
consequences for the political behavior of the individuals within the states (cf. Key 1949; Elazar 1984; Huckfeldt
and Kohfeld 1989; Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993). Moreover, our data are not conducive to measures of
11
activists who encounter a highly-liberal climate within their state parties and within their states more
generally should be more likely than their fellow partisans to be consistently liberal on multiple
policy issues. Republican activists who come from highly-conservative state parties and populations
should be more likely than other Republicans to be consistently conservative.
Our measure of state political context combines two measures of the conservatism of the
Democratic or Republican party in a state with one measure of the conservatism of the state
population. The two party-level indicators are the measures of the ideology of state electoral elites
and the ideology of state party identifiers created by Erikson, Wright, and McIver (1993). For
Democratic activists, the measures are the mean conservatism of the Democratic elected officeholders in a state and the mean conservatism of Democratic identifiers in a state. For Republican
activists, the measures are the mean conservatism of Republican electoral elites and Republican
identifiers. Erikson, Wright, and McIver (1993) also note that the religious fundamentalism of a
state’s population serves as a reliable indicator of the state’s policy conservatism. Moreover,
conservative Protestant churches tend to espouse very-conservative views on cultural issues and, in
keeping with their spiritual individualism (for example, their focus on saving souls rather than social
betterment), to be proponents of economic individualism (Guth et al. 1997). Thus, our measure of
the conservatism of state populations is the percentage of the population belonging to conservative
Protestant denominations.12 Since the three indicators of the state political environment are all
highly correlated (r>.50 for each pair of indicators for Republicans, r>.70 for Democrats), our
measures of state context for Democratic and Republican activists are factor scores from a principalcomponents factor analysis of the indicators for each party.13
Religion. Recent research finds that Democratic and Republican activists are growing
increasingly different along religious lines. The percentage of Republican activists who are
committed members of evangelical Protestant churches increased sharply in the 1980s and 1990s,
while the percentage of Democratic activists who are seculars (identify with no religious faith) also
grew noticeably over that period. In general, Republican activists have become more devout, while
Democrats have grown less likely to engage in traditional religious practices (Layman 1999). Not
surprisingly, the growing religious cleavage between the parties’ activists has been associated closely
with increases in party polarization on cultural issues (Layman 1999). However, it has not led to a
political context in geographical units smaller than states.
12
This percentage was estimated from a national religious census conducted in 1990 (Bradley et al. 1992).
Our category of conservative Protestant denominations includes all traditionally-white evangelical Protestant
denominations as well as “nontraditional” conservative denominations such as Latter-Day Saints. The coding was
based on classifications provided by Kellstedt and Green (1993) and Kellstedt et al. (1996) and on descriptions of
denominations provided by Melton (1987).
13
The analysis for both parties yielded only one factor with an eigenvalue greater than one. In both
analyses, the measures of elite conservatism, identifier conservatism, and state fundamentalism all had loadings on
that factor of .80 or greater.
12
convergence of Democratic and Republican activists on social welfare issues because the ascendant
religious groups in the two parties are no less committed than other activists to the traditional social
welfare stands of their parties. In keeping with the economic individualism of evangelical Protestant
clergy (Guth et al. 1997), committed evangelicals tend to be the most conservative Republican
activists not only on cultural issues, but also on social welfare issues. Secular Democrats are just as
liberal as, if not more liberal than, the more-traditional groups of Democratic activists (Layman
2000).
Thus, we suspect that religious orientations–particularly membership in a religious tradition
(a family of religious denominations that share common beliefs, behaviors, and origins) and levels of
religious commitment, or devotion–shape the likelihood that activists have consistently conservative
or liberal views on cultural and social welfare issues. Following the predominant framework in the
literature on religion and politics (Kellstedt and Green 1993; Kellstedt et al. 1996), we operationalize
religion with a set of dummy variables for the six largest religious traditions in the U.S.–evangelical
Protestants, mainline Protestants, Catholics, black Protestants, Jews, and seculars–and by dividing
the three largest traditions into low and high levels of religious commitment.14 We hypothesize that
committed evangelical Republicans should be more likely than other GOP activists to have
conservative positions on both cultural and social welfare issues. Secular Democrats should be more
likely than their fellow partisans to have liberal attitudes on both dimensions.
Education. Higher education levels tend to be associated with greater ideological
sophistication and thus more ideologically-consistent policy attitudes. So, we might expect bettereducated individuals to be more likely than less well-educated activists to have consistently liberal or
conservative views on social welfare and cultural issues. However, education also is related to
liberal positions on cultural issues (cf. Cook, Jelen, and Wilcox 1992). So, better-educated
Democratic activists may well be more likely than Democrats with lower education levels to have
liberal attitudes on social welfare and cultural issues. Among Republican activists, however, higher
education levels may decrease the likelihood of being conservative on both dimensions.15
14
See Layman (1999) for details on classifying the religious affiliations in the CDS surveys into these six
traditions. Religious commitment is the sum of respondents’ frequency of worship attendance and the amount of
guidance they claim to receive from religion. The low and high commitment categories for particular religious
traditions are defined simply as commitment levels below and above the median commitment level for the tradition.
In the Democratic analysis, we include dummy variables for secular, mainline Protestants and Catholics with low
and high commitment levels, black Protestants, and Jews and use all evangelical Protestants as the comparison
category. We do not divide evangelicals into low and high commitment levels due to the small number of
evangelical Democrats. In the Republican analysis, we include dummy variables for low and high commitment
groups among evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, and Catholics and use seculars as the comparison
category. Due to very small numbers, black Protestants and Jews are excluded from the analysis for Republicans.
15
We do not include race in our analysis due to the presence of a dummy variable for black Protestants,
almost all of whom are black, in the Democratic analysis and the very small number of African-Americans in the
Republican sample. We examined the effect of other demographic characteristics, such as income, gender, and age,
on social welfare and cultural attitude combinations. These factors did not have any effect on the attitude
combinations when we controlled for ideological identification.
13
The dependent variables. The dependent variables in our analysis are the combinations of
activists’ attitudes on social welfare and cultural issues. The construction of these variables took
shape in three steps. First, we divided respondents into cultural liberals, moderates, and
conservatives based on their attitudes toward the issues of abortion and prayer in the public
schools,16 then into social welfare liberals, moderates, and conservatives based on their attitudes
toward government help for blacks, the level of government services and spending, and government
provision of health insurance.17 Second, we combined these two ordinal variables to create a
nominal variable containing the nine possible combinations of social welfare and cultural attitudes.
Such a nominal dependent variable requires a multinomial logit analysis to test our hypotheses.
However, a multinomial logit analysis with a nine-category dependent variable would be far too
cumbersome to yield any clear interpretations.
So, our third step was to combine some of the nine attitude categories to create separate fourcategory variables for the two parties. The four combinations of social welfare and cultural attitudes
for Democratic activists are liberal on both, liberal on social welfare and moderate or conservative on
cultural issues, moderate or conservative on social welfare and liberal on cultural issues, and
moderate or conservative on both. In our multinomial logit analysis for Democrats, liberal on both
issue dimensions is the comparison category. The four combinations of social welfare and cultural
attitudes for Republican activists are conservative on both, conservative on social welfare and
moderate or liberal on cultural issues, moderate or liberal on social welfare and conservative on
cultural issues, and moderate or liberal on both. In our analysis for Republicans, conservative on
both dimensions is the comparison category.
The results. Table 1 presents the odds-ratio coefficients (the exponential of the multinomial
logit coefficients) from our multinomial logit analyses of Democratic and Republican activists’
combinations of social welfare and cultural attitudes. The odds-ratio coefficients for Democrats
represent the degree to which an activist is more likely to hold a particular combination of social
welfare and cultural attitudes than to hold liberal attitudes on both dimensions after a one-unit
16
The correlation between abortion and school prayer attitudes is .52. We define cultural liberals as
activists who take either of the two most pro-choice positions (never prohibit abortions and permit abortions for
reasons other than rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother if there is a clear need) on the four-category
abortion scale and who say that no prayer should be permitted in the public schools. Cultural conservatives are
activists who take either of the two most pro-life positions on abortion (never permit abortion and permit only in the
cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life) and favor Christian prayers in the public schools. Cultural
moderates are activists who either are pro-choice on abortion, but support non-denominational or Christian prayers
in the public schools, or are pro-life on abortion, but support either no prayer or only non-denominational prayers in
the public schools.
17
The average correlation between these three attitudes is .64. Each of the social welfare indicators is a
seven-point scale, coded to range from the most liberal to the most conservative position. We summed these three
scales and then transformed the resulting social welfare index back into a scale ranging from one to seven. Social
welfare liberals are simply those activists whose positions on the social welfare scale are less than three. Social
welfare moderates are activists whose positions on the scale range from three to five. Social welfare conservatives
are activists whose positions on the scale are greater than five.
14
increase in an independent variable, holding all other independent variables constant. For
Republicans, they represent the degree to which an activist is more likely to hold a particular
combination of social welfare and cultural attitudes than to hold conservative attitudes on both after a
one-unit increase in an independent variable.18
The results indicate that ideological identification has a sizeable impact on activists’
combinations of social welfare and cultural attitudes. Increases in conservative identification among
Democrats increase the odds that an activist holds moderate or conservative positions on at least one
issue dimension rather than holding liberal positions on both dimensions and greatly increase the
odds that an activist holds moderate or conservative views on both sets of issues. Similar increases
among Republicans greatly decrease the odds that an activist will be moderate or liberal on one or
both dimensions rather than being conservative on both social welfare and cultural issues.
The effects of other factors on activists’ attitude combinations pales in comparison to that of
liberal-conservative identification, but are nevertheless interesting and, in many cases, statisticallysignificant. It is clear that purposive political motivations are associated with consistent liberalism
for Democratic activists as increases in the importance of purposive incentives relative to material
and solidary incentives significantly decreases the odds of having any combination of social welfare
and cultural positions other than liberal views on both. Incentives for participation also have some
effect on Republican attitudes. As Republican activists’ goals become more purposive, the odds of
being social welfare conservatives but cultural moderates or liberals rather than holding conservative
views on both dimensions decreases, and the decrease is marginally significant.
Our hypotheses about the attitudinal impact of length of activism do not receive much
support, but among Republicans, the odds of having moderate or liberal positions on both issue
dimensions instead of conservative views on both does increase with length. On the Democratic
side, veteran activists are less likely than newcomers to hold moderate or conservative positions on
social welfare issues and liberal views on cultural issues. This is not surprising since the partisan
change literature expects more-experienced activists to be more likely than newer activists to be
polarized along older dimensions of partisan conflict, like social welfare, but less likely than
newcomers to be polarized along newer conflict dimensions, like cultural matters.
The effect of group memberships is generally what we expected. On the Democratic side,
affiliation with old left groups increases the odds that activists are social welfare liberals and cultural
moderates or conservatives rather than being liberal on both dimensions. However, such affiliations
decrease the odds that activists will have any combination of attitudes that includes moderate or
conservative views on social welfare issues. New Left group memberships promote consistent
liberalism among Democrats as they significantly decrease the odds of having any combination of
18
All independent variables have been coded to range from zero to one, so that a one-unit increase in each
variable entails moving from its lowest value to its highest value. Of course, odds-ratio coefficients less than one
indicate that an increase in an independent variable decreases the odds of an activist occupying a particular category
rather than the comparison category. Odds-ratio coefficients greater than one indicate that an increase in an
independent variable increases those odds.
15
attitudes other than liberal views on the social welfare and cultural agendas. New Right
memberships have a moderating influence, particularly on Democrats’ cultural attitudes. They lead
to significant increases in the odds of holding liberal social welfare and moderate cultural positions
and of holding moderate positions on both types of issues. They do not significantly increase the
odds of being moderate on social welfare and liberal on cultural matters instead of being liberal on
both.
Among Republican activists, old left memberships increase the odds of having moderate or
liberal views on social welfare issues as opposed to supporting conservative positions on both social
welfare and cultural matters, while new left affiliations increase the odds of having moderate or
liberal views on cultural issues. The effect of new right group memberships is, of course, in the
opposite direction of new left associations, but also seems to be largely on cultural attitudes. New
right affiliations significantly decrease the odds of being social welfare conservatives and cultural
moderates and of holding moderate views on both dimensions instead of being conservative on both.
They do not, however, significantly decrease the odds of holding moderate social welfare views and
conservative cultural views.
The impact of relative evaluations of Pat Buchanan and George Bush has a significant and
substantial impact on the attitude combinations of Republican activists. As those evaluations grow
more favorable toward Buchanan and less favorable toward Bush, the odds of having any
combination of attitudes other than conservative views on both social welfare and cultural issues
declines considerably.
On the Democratic side, the effect of support for particular presidential candidates does not
appear to be as great. The odds of having moderate or conservative social welfare attitudes and
liberal cultural attitudes instead of liberal attitudes on both dimensions were less for Harkin
supporters than for Clinton supporters, but the difference is only marginally significant. The only
coefficient reaching standard levels of statistical significance is one for Tsongas supporters. In
keeping with Tsongas’ economically-moderate but culturally-liberal campaign, the odds of holding
moderate or conservative positions on social welfare and liberal positions on cultural matters instead
of being liberal on both is significantly greater for activists favoring Tsongas than for activists
favoring Clinton.
The conservatism of the state political context does not seem to have much effect on the
attitude combinations of Democratic activists. Among Republican activists, however, increases in
the conservatism of Republican elected officials and identifiers and of the state population are
associated with significant and substantial decreases in the odds of having moderate positions on
social welfare and conservative positions on cultural issues or of being moderate on both dimensions
instead of holding conservative views on both.
Activists’ religious orientations have some interesting effects on their combinations of social
welfare and cultural attitudes. Among Democratic activists, there are clear differences between the
attitude combinations of evangelical Protestants (the comparison category) and those of seculars,
Jews, and mainline Protestants with low levels of religious commitment. But, the differences seem
16
to be principally on cultural issues. The odds of being liberal on social welfare and moderate or
conservative on cultural issues or of being moderate or conservative on both dimensions instead of
being liberal on both are significantly smaller for seculars, Jews, and less-committed mainliners than
for evangelicals. However, the odds of holding moderate social welfare attitudes and liberal cultural
attitudes rather than holding liberal views on both dimensions are not significantly smaller for the
former three groups than they are for evangelicals. The odds of being a social welfare liberal and
cultural moderate are less for mainline Protestants with high levels of commitment than for all
evangelical Protestants. The odds of holding moderate positions on both sets of issues instead of
holding liberal views on both are less for Catholics with low levels of commitment than they are for
evangelicals. The odds of being a social welfare moderate and a cultural liberal as opposed to being
liberal on both dimensions are less for more-devout Catholics than for evangelicals.
Among Republican activists, the statistically-significant effects of religion are all on the odds
of having conservative social welfare attitudes but moderate or liberal cultural attitudes instead of
having conservative attitudes on both groups of issues. Those odds are significantly less for highlycommitted evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, and Catholics than they are for secular
activists. That suggests that high levels of religious commitment work to produce consistent
ideological conservatism within the GOP.
Education levels do not appear to affect the attitudinal combinations of Republican activists,
but they do seem to have an influence on those combinations among Democrats. The effect for
Democrats is principally on cultural attitudes as more education leads to significant reductions in the
odds of being either liberal or moderate on social welfare issues and moderate on cultural issues as
opposed to being liberal on both dimensions. Higher education does not affect the odds of
Democratic activists holding moderate social welfare attitudes and liberal cultural attitudes instead of
holding liberal attitudes on both sets of issues.
To provide a more concrete sense of the impact of these variables on the likelihood of
holding various combinations of social welfare and cultural attitudes, tables 2 and 3 show the
probability (predicted from the models in table 1) of having a particular attitude combination at
different levels of each independent variable when the other independent variables are held constant
at their means. In the interests of space, we will summarize these predicted probabilities by briefly
discussing the attributes of those party activists most likely to hold consistently liberal and
consistently conservative social welfare and cultural attitudes.
Among Democrats, the activists most likely to hold liberal attitudes on both dimensions are
activists who see themselves as being very liberal, who place much more emphasis on purposive
goals than on material and solidary goals, who belong to a number of groups concerned with new left
causes, who are secular or Jewish, and have high levels of education. In the GOP, the activists most
likely to have conservative positions on social welfare and cultural issues are activists who see
themselves as being very conservative, whose political goals are more purposive, who belong to a
number of new right groups, who have positive evaluations of highly-conservative presidential
candidates like Pat Buchanan, and who are devout members of one of the three predominantly-white
17
Christian traditions.
What Drives General Ideological Polarization? Activist Replacement Versus Attitudinal
Conversion
Aggregate ideological change among party activists typically is attributed to the replacement
of old activists by newly-mobilized activists who hold different political views and/or to the
conversion of old activists who remain active, or continuing activists, to new policy positions.19
Some of the major work on activist-level partisan change focuses exclusively on turnover among
party activists (cf. Aldrich 1983a, 1983b). That seems logical given the highly permeable nature of
the American party system and the fact that most party activists are “occasional” activists,
participating only when they are stimulated by certain issues or certain candidates (Carmines and
Stimson 1989). When a new set of activists is aroused by new candidates or new political issues,
they find few barriers to entering one of the two parties. These activists replace old activists who
were motivated by old candidates or old issues, are less stimulated by the new developments, and
thus disengage from party activity.
So, one process that may be driving the general ideological polarization of party activists is
replacement. In the Republican party, new activists who have conservative views on social welfare
and cultural issues may be replacing activists who were drawn into the GOP by its traditional
economic conservatism, but may have more moderate or liberal attitudes on the newer cultural
issues. Another possibility is that some of the religious conservatives who were mobilized into
Republican activity in the early 1980s by the party’s newfound cultural conservatism, but had more
moderate or liberal views on social welfare due to their relatively low education and income levels,
are being replaced by new groups of religiously-conservative activists who, in keeping with the
Christian Right’s increasing focus on conservative economic and social welfare positions, have
highly-conservative attitudes on both domestic policy agendas. Similarly, the growing presence of
consistent liberalism in the Democratic party may be due to new activists who have liberal positions
on social welfare and cultural issues replacing old activists who are not liberal on both dimensions.
The empirical evidence, however, is that replacement is not the only process that drives
aggregate ideological change in the parties. Some scholars show that a fair amount of change among
activists stems from attitudinal conversion among continuing activists (Stone, Rapoport, and
Abramowitz 1990; Herrera 1995), with the impact of conversion at times overshadowing that of
19
There are two other processes that may produce change in the aggregate ideological positions of party
activists. One is the expansion or contraction of the overall size of the activist population resulting from divergent
rates of mobilization of new activists and disengagement of old activists (Rapoport and Stone 1994). The other is
ideologically-driven party switching (e.g. conservative Democratic activists switching to the GOP) (Clark et al.
1991). We do not consider changes in size because our focus here is on the entire set of party activists (rather than a
primary electorate or caucus participants) and there is little evidence of substantial fluctuation over time in the size
of the two parties’ activist pools (see Carsey and Layman 1999). We do not consider party switching because panel
surveys of party activists uncover very little party switching within a constrained time period (e.g. eight years)
(Stone 1991), and there are no party switchers in the panel components of the CDS surveys.
18
replacement (Rapoport and Stone 1994; Carsey and Layman 1999). Continuing activists may
convert to more ideologically-extreme policy positions because the issue stands taken by their
parties’ candidates and platforms are growing less centrist and affecting their own views. They also
may convert to less centrist positions because of the influx into the party of new activists who have
extreme positions on certain issues and the social and political interaction that continuing activists
have with the newcomers (Layman and Carsey 1998).
So, part of the explanation for the growing polarization of party activists on both social
welfare and cultural issues may be conversion of continuing party activists to more extreme views on
one or both sets of issues. Take, for example, continuing Republican activists who were initially
engaged by the GOP’s social welfare conservatism, but were pro-choice on abortion and liberal or
moderate on other cultural issues. The longer they remain active in the GOP, the more likely they
are to support candidates who have highly-conservative views on cultural issues, to read Republican
platforms that take very-conservative cultural stands, and to interact politically and socially with the
culturally-conservative activists who have moved into Republican politics. This may lead them to
convert to more conservative cultural positions themselves. Meanwhile, the activists who entered
Republican politics because of the party’s growing cultural conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s, but
who had more-moderate views on social welfare, may be moved by the conservative social welfare
stands of Republican candidates, platforms, and fellow activists to adopt more conservative views on
these issues.
Examining replacement and conversion effects on the aggregate issue positions of
Democratic and Republican activists requires panel data. Several of the CDS surveys contained
panel components, but the last one to do so was the 1988 CDS, which re-interviewed 2,745
individuals who responded to the 1984 CDS. So, our focus here is on the role of activist replacement
and conversion in producing aggregate change in the social welfare and cultural attitudes of party
activists between 1984 and 1988.
In table 4, we examine the effect of activist turnover between 1984 and 1988 on party
ideology by comparing the issue attitudes of “dropouts,” those individuals who were active in the
presidential campaign of 1984 but disengaged from party activity before the 1988 campaign, to those
of “stayers,” individuals who were active in both the 1984 and 1988 campaigns, and “newcomers,”
individuals who were not active in the 1984 campaign but were active in 1988.20 Specifically, we
compare the attitudes of these three groups on three cultural issues (abortion, the Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA), and school prayer), three social welfare issues (government spending on aid to
education, government spending on social security, and government spending on assistance to
20
Replacement effects typically are computed by taking the difference between the attitudes of newcomers
at time 2 to the attitudes of dropouts at time 1 (Rapoport and Stone 1994). But, comparing the attitudes of those
activists at time 1 who remain active at time 2 to those activists at time 1 who drop out of activity at time 2 also
provides insight into the effects of activist circulation on the aggregate ideology of a party. Specifically, it tells us
whether those who stayed were more ideologically-extreme to begin with than those who dropped out.
19
minorities), and ideological identification.21
The table provides no evidence that activist turnover led to greater party polarization on
cultural issues, social welfare issues, or liberal-conservative self-placement. On most of the issues
and on ideological identification, newcomers to Democratic activity in 1988 were more conservative
than Democrats who disengaged from party activity between 1984 and 1988, and newcomers to
Republican activity in 1988 were more liberal than 1984 Republican activists who dropped out in
1988. There is also nothing to suggest that the individuals who were active in the Democratic
campaigns of 1984 and 1988 were more liberal to begin with than the 1984 Democratic activists who
dropped out before 1988 or that the continuing Republican activists were more conservative to begin
with than the Republican dropouts. Given the very short time frame of this analysis, its results do not
indicate that activist replacement has played no role in creating greater ideological polarization
between the two parties. In fact, analysis of panel data between 1980 and 1988 shows that activist
circulation in fact did lead to greater party polarization (Stone, Rapoport, and Abramowitz 1990).
However, these results do suggest that some process other than replacement may have played a part
in pushing the parties’ activists toward more polarized aggregate positions on social welfare and
cultural issues.
That process may well be the conversion of individual continuing activists to more
ideologically-extreme positions on the social welfare and cultural dimensions. We assess that
possibility by dividing our three cultural issues, our three social welfare issues, and the liberalconservative identification scale into liberal, moderate, and conservative categories. Then, in table 5,
we examine the percentage of continuing Democratic and Republican activists in each of these three
categories whose attitudes between 1984 and 1988 changed in a liberal direction, did not change at
all, and changed in a conservative direction. If attitudinal conversion is a catalyst for partisan
ideological polarization, then we should see the following patterns: Among activists with liberal
views on an issue in 1984, Democrats should be more likely to not change at all or perhaps to change
in a liberal direction while Republicans should be more likely to change in a conservative direction.
Among activists with moderate views on an issue in 1984, Democrats should be more likely to
convert to a more liberal position while Republicans should be more likely to convert to a more
conservative position. Among activists with conservative views on an issue in 1984, Democrats
should be more likely to convert to a more liberal position while Republicans should be more likely
to not change at all or perhaps to change in a more conservative direction.
These expectations receive strong support in the table. Focusing first on activists with
moderate positions in 1984, Republicans were more likely, sometimes much more likely, than
Democrats to convert to more conservative positions on every issue and on ideological identification
21
The attitudes of dropouts, defined empirically as those individuals who responded to both the 1984 and
1988 surveys and said they were active in 1984, but said they were not active in 1988, and stayers, defined as those
individuals who responded to both the 1984 and 1988 surveys and said they were active in both years, were
measured with the 1984 CDS. The attitudes of newcomers, defined as those respondents to the 1988 CDS who said
that they were active in the 1988 campaign, but not the 1984 campaign, were measured with the 1988 CDS.
20
between 1984 and 1988. Democrats were always more likely than Republicans to convert to more
liberal positions. Among activists with liberal positions in 1984, Democrats were always more likely
than Republicans to not change at all between 1984 and 1988. Republicans were more likely than
Democrats to convert to more conservative positions on every issue and on liberal-conservative selfplacement. Among activists with conservative positions in 1984, Republicans without exception
were more likely than Democrats to not change at all between 1984 and 1988. Democrats were
always more likely, and generally much more likely, to convert to more liberal positions. The
evidence that the attitudinal conversion of continuing activists to more ideologically-extreme views
has played a role in fostering the ideological polarization of the parties is strong and very consistent.
However, the evidence is not conclusive because there may well be error in the measurement
of issue attitudes and that error may artificially inflate the level of activist conversion between 1984
and 1988. Moreover, it is possible that what appear to be party effects–Democrats converting to
more liberal positions and Republicans converting to more conservative positions–in fact may not be.
Instead, the patterns in table 5 may result from the tendency of politically-sophisticated individuals to
bring their attitudes on particular issues into line with either their positions on other issues or their
abstract ideological frameworks (Converse 1964). In other words, the reason that Republican
activists are converting, on average, to more conservative positions on particular issues may not be
the stands taken by Republican candidates and platforms on those issues or their interactions with
other GOP activists. Instead, it may be that they tend to be conservative on most other issues and
have general political outlooks that are conservative and feel some pressure, consciously or
otherwise, to bring their views on specific issues into line with these other perspectives. Democratic
activists may be converting, on average, to more liberal positions on particular issues because they
are bringing their views on those issues into line with their liberal attitudes on most other issues or
with their tendency to think about politics through a liberal ideological framework.
In order to correct for the measurement error in the observed issue attitudes of party activists
and to examine whether party, positions on other issues, or abstract ideological identifications are
driving attitudinal conversion on social welfare and cultural issues, we developed the structural
equation model in figure 3 and estimated it using AMOS 3.6. The measurement portion of the
model–that part of the model that accounts for measurement error in social welfare and cultural
attitudes–consists of four latent variables–social welfare attitudes in 1984 and 1988 and cultural
attitudes in 1984 and 1988–and three observed indicators of each latent variable. The observed
indicators of social welfare attitudes are the responses of individuals who were active in both 1984
and 1988 to the CDS questions on government aid to education, social security spending, and
government assistance of minorities. The observed indicators of cultural attitudes are the responses
of continuing activists to the CDS questions on abortion, the ERA, and school prayer. In order to
provide a scale for the latent variables, we set the factor loading for one observed variable–aid to
education for social welfare attitudes and abortion for cultural attitudes–to one. Social welfare
attitudes thus take on the three-point scale of the aid to education variable and cultural attitudes take
on the four-point scale of the abortion variable. Also, in order to ensure the similarity of latent social
21
welfare and cultural attitudes over time, we constrain the factor loadings of each observed indicator
to be equal across the two panel waves (Wheaton et al. 1977). Finally, because we have three
observed indicators for each latent variable, we have sufficient degrees of freedom to allow the
measurement errors for the observed indicators to be correlated across panel waves (Kline 1998).
The confirmatory factor loadings of the latent variables on the observed indicators are shown in the
bottom part of table 6 and are all statistically-significant and relatively strong.
The structural portion of the model examines the impact of party, ideological affiliation, and
attitudes on the other issue dimension on changes in attitudes toward social welfare and cultural
issues between 1984 and 1988. It suggests that there are cross-lagged effects between activists’
social welfare and cultural attitudes over time (cf. Finkel 1995). In other words, an activist’s social
welfare attitude at one time point is a function of his or her social welfare attitude at the previous
time point and his or her cultural attitude at the previous time point, and an activist’s cultural attitude
at one time point is a function of his or her cultural attitude at the previous time point and his or her
social welfare attitude at the previous time point. We also posit that activists’ social welfare and
cultural attitudes at one time point are affected by their party affiliation and ideological identification
at the previous time point.22
Because the model controls for the influence of social welfare and cultural attitudes in 1984
on those same attitudes in 1988, the effect of other variables on these attitudes in 1988–the crosslagged effects of social welfare and cultural attitudes on each other and the effects of party and
ideology in 1984 on both sets of attitudes–can be interpreted as the impact of those variables on
change in social welfare and cultural attitudes between 1984 and 1988. In other words, our model
assesses whether activists are changing their social welfare attitudes over time to bring them into line
with their previously-held views on cultural issues and their prior party affiliations and ideological
identifications, and whether activists are changing their cultural attitudes over time to make them
more consistent with their previously-held social welfare views and their prior party affiliations and
ideological identifications.23
22
We model party and ideological identification as being measured without error because we have only
two waves of data and only one observed indicator for each variable, and thus could not identify a model that
treated these variables as latent. Moreover, it is very likely that, in a survey of delegates to the party’s national
conventions, the party variable is measured perfectly. It also should be noted that the correlation between party in
1984 and party in 1988 is 1.0 and the correlation between ideology in 1984 and ideology in 1988 is .89. Thus, the
effect of party in 1984 is the equivalent of the effect of party in 1988 and the effect of ideology in 1984 is the near
equivalent of the effect of ideology in 1988.
23
It is possible that social welfare and cultural attitudes have simultaneous effects on each other, but we
model their relationship as reciprocal, but not synchronous, for three reasons. First, one of our substantive interests
is on whether changes over time in social welfare and cultural attitudes are related to each other. The cross-lagged
model is better equipped to examine this than is a model of contemporaneous effects. Second, the cross-lagged
model is not limited to discrete time processes of change (Finkel 1995). Even if change occurs continually during
the interval between the times when observations are measured, the cross-lagged model “tends not to be misleading
about the direction of causal influence” (Dwyer 1983: 352). Finally, estimating a simultaneous-effects model would
require the use of instrumental variables to identify the equations in the model. Such instruments are difficult to
define and defend in survey data (Dwyer 1983; Finkel 1995), and if they contain measurement error, one’s estimates
22
The estimates of the structural portion of the model show, of course, that the lagged values of
social welfare and cultural attitudes on their values in 1988 are very strong and highly-significant.
When we account for measurement error, these policy attitudes are very stable and that is particularly
true for attitudes toward cultural issues. That stability, however, does not mean that activists are not
converting on social welfare and cultural issues to make their views more consistent with their party
affiliation, their ideological identification, and their attitudes on the other issue dimension.
Our estimates show that all of these processes in fact are occurring. The cross-lagged effects
of cultural and social welfare attitudes on each other are statistically-significant. Activists with
more-conservative views on cultural issues in 1984 were more likely to convert to more-conservative
views on social welfare issues between 1984 and 1988 than were activists with more liberal cultural
attitudes in 1984. Activists with more-conservative views on social welfare issues in 1984 were
more likely than activists with more-liberal social welfare attitudes in 1984 to change their positions
on cultural issues in a conservative direction. The effect of ideological identification on change in
activists’ social welfare and cultural attitudes is also significant. The more conservative an activist’s
ideological self-placement in 1984, the more likely he or she was to convert toward more
conservative positions on social welfare issues and cultural issues between 1984 and 1988. Finally,
and perhaps most importantly, party has a statistically-significant effect on change in attitudes toward
both issue dimensions. Even accounting for measurement error and taking into account the effects of
ideological identification and the cross-lagged effects of cultural and social welfare attitudes on each
other, Republicans were significantly more likely than Democrats to convert to more conservative
positions on both social welfare and cultural issues between 1984 and 1988.
The cross-lagged effects and the effects of party and ideological identification on change in
social welfare and cultural attitudes are all small. For example, conservative conversion on the threepoint social welfare scale was only .08 points greater for Republican activists than for Democratic
activists. Conservative conversion on the four-point cultural scale was only .05 points greater for
Republicans than for Democrats. However, we would not expect conversion rates to be large. Our
sample consists of politically-sophisticated activists, many of whom are involved in party politics
because of their commitment to their issue positions, and we have corrected for measurement error in
issue attitudes. If the conversion rates were large, we would be rather suspicious.
So, these results do not suggest massive conversions of continuing Republican activists to
more conservative positions and of continuing Democratic activists to more liberal positions over a
four-year period. What they do suggest is that attitudinal conversion among activists has helped to
produce greater party polarization on both the social welfare and cultural issue dimensions. Because
of the political environment they face in their parties and because of the impact their ideological
frameworks and their attitudes on other issues have on their views on particular issues, continuing
Democratic activists are moving their social welfare and cultural outlooks to more liberal positions
may be seriously biased (Green and Palmquist 1990). In fact, Finkel (1995) notes that, with panel data, lagged
values of the endogenous variables are often turned to as instruments, thereby leaving little to distinguish the
simultaneous-effects model from the cross-lagged effects model.
23
while Republican activists are moving their views on these issues to more conservative positions.
The Impact of Candidate Preference on Activist Conversion
Since there is a great deal of stability in activists’ social welfare and cultural attitudes over
time, it is clear that not all activists are likely to convert to more ideologically-extreme positions. In
fact, in the short term, the large majority of activists are likely to not change at all. So, an important
question is which Democratic activists are most likely to convert to more liberal social welfare and
cultural positions and which Republican activists are most likely to change their attitudes on these
issues in a conservative direction? Of course, we already have identified some of the factors that
make activists more likely to convert. The Democratic activists most likely to convert to more liberal
social welfare or cultural views are those activists who think of themselves as being very liberal and
who have very-liberal positions on the other issue dimension. The Republican activists most likely
to become more conservative on one of the issue dimensions are those who identify themselves as
being very conservative and who have highly-conservative attitudes on the other dimension.
Another factor that may distinguish those activists who convert to more ideologicallyextreme social welfare and cultural positions from those who do not is a preference for particular
presidential candidates. Since activists sometimes bring their policy attitudes into line with those of
the candidates whom they support (McCann 1995), activists who support ideologically-extreme
candidates for their party’s nomination may be more likely than activists who support moderate
candidates to convert to more extreme issue positions. To examine this possibility, we incorporated
1988 candidate preferences into our measurement and cross-lagged structural models and estimated
the models separately for continuing activists in each party. The results are presented in table 7.
In the Democratic model, we included dummy variables for supporters of Michael Dukakis,
Jesse Jackson, Richard Gephardt, and Paul Simon and left supporters of Al Gore as the comparison
category. We expect supporters of more-liberal candidates like Dukakis, Jackson, and Simon to be
more likely than supporters of a more-moderate candidate like Gore to change their social welfare
and cultural attitudes in a more liberal direction. This expectation is met for social welfare issues, as
Dukakis, Jackson, and Simon supporters were all more likely than Gore supporters to become more
liberal on social welfare between 1984 and 1988. Democratic candidate preferences did not have any
effect on cultural conversion over this period.
In the Republican model, we include dummy variables for supporters of Jack Kemp, Bob
Dole, and Pierre du Pont, leaving activists who preferred George Bush as the comparison category.24
We expect supporters of highly-conservative candidates like Kemp and du Pont to be more likely
than supporters of more-moderate candidates like Bush and Dole to convert to more-conservative
social welfare and cultural positions. In fact, Kemp supporters were more likely than Bush
supporters to change both their social welfare and cultural attitudes in a conservative direction.
Supporters of du Pont were more likely than activists favoring Bush to convert to a more24
There were too few supporters of Pat Robertson in the sample to include those activists in the analysis.
24
conservative social welfare attitude. So, there is some evidence that ideologically-extreme
candidacies like those of Jesse Jackson and Jack Kemp (and perhaps those of Ronald Reagan and
Edward Kennedy before them and that of Pat Buchanan after them) have motivated continuing party
activists to convert to more ideologically-extreme issue positions.
Summary
A good answer to the question of why the parties’ elites and electoral coalitions have grown
increasingly divided along multiple ideological dimensions may be this: the policy positions of
electoral elites and the political perspectives of the mass electorate are shaped heavily by the
ideological orientations of the parties’ activists, and those activists have become increasingly
polarized along multiple ideological dimensions. This paper has shown that Democratic and
Republican activists have been full participants in, and perhaps catalysts for, the general ideological
polarization of the parties. The differences between the aggregate positions of the parties’ activists
have grown not only on the newer cultural issues, but also on the older issues surrounding the role of
government in promoting economic and racial equality. Over time, Democratic activists have, as a
group, become more likely to hold liberal views on both the social welfare and cultural dimensions of
domestic public policy. Republican activists have grown more likely to have conservative attitudes
on both of these dimensions.
We have identified a number of factors related to the propensity of individual Democratic
activists to have consistently-liberal positions on both social welfare and cultural issues and of
individual Republican activists to have consistently-conservative views on both sets of issues. These
include abstract ideological identification, the extent to which activists are motivated by purposive,
ideological goals, the types of groups to which activists belong and the political context within their
home state, the types of candidates they support, and their religious affiliations and levels of religious
devotion.
We also have shown that the conversion of individual activists to more ideologically-extreme
social welfare and cultural issue positions has played a significant role in pushing the parties in
polarized directions on both issue dimensions. Thus, if the parties continue to nominate candidates
and write platforms that take extreme social welfare and cultural stands, we should expect further
increases in the general ideological polarization of party activists. We should expect this not just
because new, more-polarized, activists are coming into the parties, but also because many of the old
activists who remain active will convert to more-polarized positions themselves.
25
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Table 1: Multinomial Logit Analysis of the Combinations of Social Welfare and Cultural Issue-Attitudes of Democratic and Republican Presidential
Campaign Activists, 1992
Party, Attitude on Social Welfare/Cultural Issues, and Odds-Ratio Coefficientsa
Democrats (Comparison group is liberal/liberal)
Republicans (Comparison group is conservative/
conservative)
ModerateLiberal/
ModerateLiberal
Liberal/
ModerateConservative
ModerateConservative/
Liberal
ModerateConservative/
ModerateConservative
Conservative/
ModerateLiberal
Ideological Identificationb
26.56***
768.58***
6162.38***
.01***
.01**
.0004***
Purpose and Length of Activism
Importance of Purposive Incentives
Years Active in Party Politics
.31*
1.88
.34*
.38*
.16***
.65
.25*
1.47
.23
4.80
.35
4.17*
Group Membership
Number of Old Left Groups
Number of New Left Groups
Number of New Right Groups
1.79**
.38**
5.83**
.53*
.40***
1.57
.40***
.10***
8.28***
3.12
13.01**
.18***
7.24**
3.06
.92
14.64***
11.60**
.15**
Candidate Preferences
Buchanan vs. Bush Evaluations
Harkin Supporterc
Brown Supporter
Tsongas Supporter
Kerry Supporter
___
1.10
.87
.95
.82
___
.53*
.88
1.68**
1.45
___
.76
1.53
1.50
.61
.11***
___
___
___
___
.12*
___
___
___
___
.12**
___
___
___
___
State Political Contextb
1.30
1.06
1.63
.79
.10**
.07***
Religion
Evangelical Protestant, Low Commitmentd
Evangelical Protestant, High Commitment
Secular
Mainline Protestant, Low Commitment
Mainline Protestant, High Commitment
Catholic, Low Commitment
Catholic, High Commitment
Black Protestant
Jewish
___
___
.14***
.20***
.32**
.60
.78
2.21
.07***
___
___
.78
.78
.65
.59
.28**
.78
.84
___
___
.15***
.38**
.54
.36**
.49
.58
.08***
.49
.36**
___
1.05
.41**
.75
.24***
___
___
2.83
3.57
___
1.75
1.71
3.49
3.79
___
___
2.05
.68
___
2.72
.85
1.76
.53
___
___
Education
.28***
1.11
.34***
1.64
1.46
1.50
(N)
χ2 (df)
Pseudo R2
% of cases correctly predicted
ModerateLiberal/
Conservative
(684)
368.08 (45)
.23
66.23
(1367)
931.34 (57)
.25
66.47
Source: 1992 Convention Delegate Study
Note: All variables range from zero to one.
a
Odds ratio coefficients represent the amount by which an activist is more likely to fall into a particular category of social welfare and cultural attitudes as
opposed to the comparison category after a one unit increase in the particular independent variable, holding all other variables constant.
b
Ranges from most liberal to most conservative.
c
The comparison category of Democratic candidate preference is Clinton.
d
Evangelical Protestant is the comparison category of religion for Democrats. Secular is the comparison category of religion for Republicans.
***p<.01; **p<.05; *p<.10
30
Table 2: The Impact of Political, Contextual, and Demographic Factors on the Mixture of Social Welfare and Cultural IssueAttitudes of Democratic Activists: Predicted Probabilities from the Multinomial Logit Analysis
Attitude on Social Welfare/Cultural Issues and Probabilities
Independent Variables
Lib/Lib
Lib/Mod
Mod/Lib
Mod/Mod
All Variables at Their Means
.30
.18
.23
.28
Ideological Identification
Very Liberal
Slightly Liberal
Moderate
.60
.29
.17
.20
.18
.14
.10
.23
.28
.10
.29
.41
.25
.33
.22
.22
.23
.25
.30
.19
.29
.31
.16
.21
.25
.20
.29
.28
.29
.32
.14
.23
.25
.21
.33
.24
.25
.37
.18
.19
.21
.23
.36
.21
.33
.27
.17
.20
.24
.21
.26
.32
Conservatism of State Political Context
Low
High
.31
.29
.18
.19
.24
.22
.27
.30
Democratic Presidential Candidate Preference
Harkin
Brown
Tsongas
Kerry
Clinton
.34
.30
.26
.30
.31
.23
.16
.15
.17
.19
.16
.19
.29
.33
.23
.26
.35
.30
.19
.27
Religion
Secular
Mainline Protestant, Low Commitment
Mainline Protestant, High Commitment
Catholic, Low Commitment
Catholic, High Commitment
Black Protestant
Jewish
Evangelical Protestant
.36
.32
.20
.29
.29
.18
.40
.21
.10
.11
.14
.25
.29
.43
.07
.24
.33
.26
.20
.19
.10
.16
.40
.19
.20
.31
.36
.27
.33
.23
.13
.36
Education
Low
High
.28
.33
.21
.16
.20
.26
.31
.25
Purpose and Length of Activism
Importance of Purposive Incentives
Lowa
High
Years Active in Party Politics
Low
High
Group Membership
Number of Old Left Group Memberships
Low
High
Number of New Left Group Memberships
Low
High
Number of New Right Group Memberships
Low
High
Note: Entries are the probabilities of having a particular combination of social welfare and cultural attitudes that were
predicted from the multinomial logit analysis.
a
For variables with designations of "low" and "high," low is one standard deviation below the variable's mean and high is one
standard deviation above the mean.
Table 3: The Impact of Political, Contextual, and Demographic Factors on the Mixture of Social Welfare and Cultural IssueAttitudes of Republican Activists: Predicted Probabilities from the Multinomial Logit Analysis
Attitude on Social Welfare/Cultural Issues and Probabilities
Independent Variables
Con/Con
Con/Mod
Mod/Con
Mod/Mod
All Variables at Their Means
.33
.46
.06
.16
Ideological Identification
Very Conservative
Slightly Conservative
Moderate
.51
.27
.18
.39
.46
.44
.04
.06
.06
.06
.21
.32
.30
.36
.48
.43
.06
.05
.16
.16
.35
.30
.47
.44
.04
.07
.14
.19
.36
.30
.46
.45
.05
.06
.13
.19
.37
.28
.41
.49
.06
.06
.15
.17
.26
.40
.51
.40
.04
.07
.19
.13
Conservatism of State Political Context
Low
High
.30
.35
.41
.49
.07
.04
.22
.12
Buchanan vs. Bush Evaluations
Low (pro-Bush)
High (pro-Buchanan)
.26
.40
.50
.41
.07
.05
.17
.14
Religion
Evangelical Protestant, Low Commitment
Evangelical Protestant, High Commitment
Mainline Protestant, Low Commitment
Mainline Protestant, High Commitment
Catholic, Low Commitment
Catholic, High Commitment
Secular
.32
.38
.25
.37
.28
.41
.28
.37
.38
.51
.41
.46
.32
.59
.07
.11
.03
.06
.08
.14
.02
.24
.13
.21
.16
.18
.13
.11
Education
Low
High
.35
.31
.44
.47
.06
.06
.16
.16
Purpose and Length of Activism
Importance of Purposive Incentives
Lowa
High
Years Active in Party Politics
Low
High
Group Membership
Number of Old Left Group Memberships
Low
High
Number of New Left Group Memberships
Low
High
Number of New Right Group Memberships
Low
High
Note: Entries are the probabilities of having a particular combination of social welfare and cultural attitudes that were
predicted from the multinomial logit analysis.
a
For variables with designations of "low" and "high," low is one standard deviation below the variable's mean and high is one
standard deviation above the mean.
Table 4: The Role of Activist Replacement in Party Polarization on Issues and Ideology, 1984-1988
Issues
Abortion
ERA
School
Prayer
Assistance to
Minorities
Aid to
Education
Social
Security
Ideological
Identification
1984-1988 Activity Patterns
Democrats
1984 Dropouts in 1984a
1984-1988 Stayers in 1984a
1988 Newcomers in 1988b
.24
.24
.23
.13
.13
.19
.18
.22
.31
.34
.36
.37
.15
.12
.09
.38
.35
.35
.32
.30
.37
Republicans
1984 Dropouts in 1984a
1984-1988 Stayers in 1984a
1988 Newcomers in 1988b
.45
.49
.44
.80
.75
.63
.75
.73
.66
.81
.79
.68
.75
.71
.38
.65
.63
.54
.78
.75
.68
Party and Group
Note: The entries are mean values of variables ranging from zero (most liberal) to one (most conservative).
a
1984 wave of the 1984-1988 Convention Delegate Study panel
b
1988 Convention Delegate Study (cross-section)
Table 5: The Amount and Direction of Activist Conversion on Policy Issues and Ideology, 1984-1988
Issues
Position on Issue in 1984,
Party, and Direction of
Conversion on Issue
Abortion
ERA
School
Prayer
Assistance to
Minorities
Aid to
Education
Social
Security
Ideological
Identification
Liberal in 1984
Democrats
Liberal change
No change
Conservative change
10.51
77.26
12.23
5.15
85.77
9.08
0.00
87.20
12.80
0.00
66.06
33.94
0.00
93.38
6.62
0.00
57.88
42.12
14.60
58.29
27.11
Republicans
Liberal change
No change
Conservative change
9.90
62.38
27.72
8.24
69.23
22.53
0.00
66.09
33.91
0.00
52.63
47.37
0.00
71.28
28.72
0.00
43.24
56.76
0.00
53.33
46.67
Moderate in 1984
Democrats
Liberal change
No change
Conservative change
___a
___
___
___b
___
___
26.29
47.42
26.29
24.70
65.22
10.08
58.90
39.27
1.83
15.31
78.79
5.90
25.00
66.07
8.93
Republicans
Liberal change
No change
Conservative change
___
___
___
___
___
___
7.05
55.07
37.89
2.97
70.34
26.69
33.57
60.42
6.01
5.38
86.27
8.35
7.86
69.66
22.47
Conservative in 1984
Democrats
Liberal change
No change
Conservative change
29.29
69.11
1.63
39.80
48.54
11.66
25.00
75.00
0.00
49.29
50.71
0.00
72.00
28.00
0.00
59.70
40.30
0.00
53.85
33.33
12.82
Republicans
Liberal change
No change
Conservative change
1.80
82.16
4.61
15.15
74.96
9.89
17.71
82.29
0.00
24.42
75.58
0.00
57.18
42.82
0.00
54.92
45.08
0.00
21.50
62.42
16.08
Source: 1984-1988 Convention Delegate Study Panel
Note: Entries are the percentage in each category of change.
a
Abortion attitude in 1984 is divided into two categories: pro-choice (the two least anti-abortion positions) and pro-life (the two most
anti-abortion positions). There is no middle or moderate category.
b
Attitude toward the ERA in 1984 is divided into two categories: approve (approve strongly and approve somewhat) and disapprove
(disapprove strongly and disapprove somewhat). There is no middle or moderate category.
Table 6: Estimates of the Structural and Measurement Parameters of the Cross-Lagged Effects Model of
Activists' Cultural and Social Welfare Issue Attitudes
Unstandardized
Coefficients
Standardized
Coefficients
Standard
Errors
Stability Parameters
1984 Social Welfare –> 1988 Social Welfare
1984 Cultural –> 1988 Cultural
.51
.84
.84
.98
.02
.01
Cross-Lagged Effects
1984 Cultural –> 1988 Social Welfare
1984 Social Welfare –> 1988 Cultural
.09
.04
.14
.04
.01
.01
Effects of Exogenous Variables
1984 Party –> 1988 Social Welfare
1984 Party –> 1988 Cultural
1984 Ideological I.D. –> 1988 Social Welfare
1988 Ideological I.D. –> 1988 Cultural
.08
.05
.06
.04
.10
.04
.26
.14
.03
.02
.01
.01
Exogenous Variable Covariance
1984 Party <–> 1984 Ideological I.D.
.67
___
.03
Factor Loadingsa
1984 Social Welfare –> 1984 Aid to Education
1984 Social Welfare –> 1984 Social Security
1984 Social Welfare –> 1984 Assistance to Minorities
1988 Social Welfare –> 1988 Aid to Education
1988 Social Welfare –> 1988 Social Security
1988 Social Welfare –> 1988 Assistance to Minorities
1.00
.47
.94
1.00
.47
.94
.81
.51
.79
.64
.35
.59
___
.03
.04
___
.03
.04
1.00
1.57
1.07
1.00
1.57
1.07
.66
.80
.79
.61
.76
.73
___
.06
.04
___
.06
.04
1984 Cultural –> 1984 Abortion
1984 Cultural –> 1984 ERA
1984 Cultural –> 1984 School Prayer
1988 Cultural –> 1988 Abortion
1988 Cultural –> 1988 ERA
1988 Cultural –> 1988 School Prayer
N=1,666
χ2 = 4,072.04 (df=68)
CFIb=.93
NNIc=.89
Source: 1984-1988 Convention Delegate Study Panel
Note: The model was estimated using AMOS 3.6. All estimates are significant at the p<.05 level. Cultural
attitudes, social welfare attitudes, and ideological i.d. range from most liberal to most conservative. Party is
coded 0 for Democrats and 1 for Republicans.
a
The unstandardized factor loadings for each observed issue attitude are constrained to be equal in 1984 and
1988.
b
Bentler Comparative Fit Index: describes the overall proportion of explained variance and ranges from 0 to 1.
c
Bentler-Bonett Non-Normed Fit Index: adjusts the proportion of explained variance for model complexity
Table 7: The Impact of 1988 Candidate Preferences Within the Cross-Lagged Effects Model of Activists'
Cultural and Social Welfare Issue Attitudes in 1984 and 1988, by Party
Unstandardized
Coefficients
Standardized
Coefficients
Standard
Errors
Stability Parameters
1984 Social Welfare –> 1988 Social Welfare
1984 Cultural –> 1988 Cultural
.63**
.96**
.79
.97
.07
.04
Cross-Lagged Effects
1984 Cultural –> 1988 Social Welfare
1984 Social Welfare –> 1988 Cultural
.05**
.25**
.24
.07
.02
.10
Effect of 1988 Candidate Preference (Comparison = Gore)
Dukakis –> 1988 Social Welfare
Dukakis –> 1988 Cultural
Jackson –> 1988 Social Welfare
Jackson –> 1988 Cultural
Gephardt –> 1988 Social Welfare
Gephardt –> 1988 Cultural
Simon –> 1988 Social Welfare
Simon –> 1988 Cultural
-.02*
.01
-.04**
-.01
-.01
.06
-.02*
-.03
-.09
.01
-.13
-.01
-.03
.03
-.08
-.02
.01
.03
.02
.04
.02
.05
.01
.04
Stability Parameters
1984 Social Welfare –> 1988 Social Welfare
1984 Cultural –> 1988 Cultural
.64**
.95**
.76
.98
.06
.04
Cross-Lagged Effects
1984 Cultural –> 1988 Social Welfare
1984 Social Welfare –> 1988 Cultural
.14**
.04
.17
.04
.05
.03
Effect of 1988 Candidate Preference (Comparison = Bush)
Kemp –> 1988 Social Welfare
Kemp –> 1988 Cultural
Dole –> 1988 Social Welfare
Dole –> 1988 Cultural
du Pont –> 1988 Social Welfare
du Pont –> 1988 Cultural
.25**
.08**
.08
.04
.21**
.10
.22
.06
.07
.01
.10
.04
.06
.04
.06
.04
.10
.07
Democrats
N=554
χ2 = 820.71 (df=94)
CFIa=.95
NNIb=.92
Republicans
N=562
χ2 = 319.11 (df=81)
CFIa=.99
NNIb=.98
Source: 1984-1988 Convention Delegate Study Panel
Note: The model was estimated using AMOS 3.6. Cultural attitudes, social welfare attitudes, and ideological i.d.
range from most liberal to most conservative. Party is coded 0 for Democrats and 1 for Republicans.
a
Bentler Comparative Fit Index: describes the overall proportion of explained variance and ranges from 0 to 1.
b
Bentler-Bonett Non-Normed Fit Index: adjusts the proportion of explained variance for model complexity
**p<.05; *p<.10
Figure 1: Partisan Ideological Polarization Among Activists and
Non-Activists, 1972-1996
Ideological Identification
Government Guarantee of Jobs
0.45
0.4
Activists
0.3
0.25
0.2
Non-Activists
0.15
Level of Party Polarization
0.4
Level of Party Polarization
Level of Party Polarization
0.4
0.35
0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0.15
0.1
0.05
Abortion
0.45
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
0.1
1996
-0.1
1972
1976
1980
Year
1984
1988
1992
1972
1996
1976
1980
Year
Government Help for Blacks
1988
1992
1996
Women's Role in Society
Government Health Insurance*
0.35
1984
Year
0.5
0.2
0.2
0.15
0.1
Level of Party Polarization
Level of Party Polarization
Level of Party Polarization
0.3
0.25
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0.05
0
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
0
1996
-0.05
1972
1976
Year
1988
1992
1996
0.3
0.4
0.25
0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
1996
Year
Source: 1972-1996 National Election Studies
Note: All issues range from most liberal (0) to most conservative (1).
Polarization is the Republican mean minus the Democratic mean.
* The health insurance question was not asked in 1980.
** Guarantee of jobs, help for blacks, health insurance
*** Abortion/women's role
-0.05
1976
1980
1984
1988
Year
1972
1976
1980
1984
Year
All Cultural Issues***
0.45
Level of Party Polarization
Level of Party Polarization
1984
Year
All Social Welfare Issues**
0.1
1980
1992
1996
1988
1992
1996
Figure 2: Combinations of Social Welfare and Cultural Attitudes
Among Democratic and Republican Activists, 1976-1996
Democrats
50
Percentage
40
30
20
10
0
Lib/Lib
Lib/Mod
Lib/Con
Mod/Lib Mod/Mod Mod/Con
Con/Lib
Con/Mod Con/Con
Position on Social Welfare and Cultural Issues
Republicans
50
Percentage
40
30
20
10
0
Lib/Lib
Lib/Mod
Lib/Con
Mod/Lib Mod/Mod Mod/Con
Con/Lib
Con/Mod Con/Con
Position on Social Welfare and Cultural Issues
1976
Source: 1976-1996 National Election Studies
1980
1984
1988
1992
1996
Figure 3: Measurement and Structural Models of the Social Welfare and Cultural
Attitudes of Continuing Party Activists in 1984 and 1988
E1
Aided_84
E2
Socsec_84
E3
E4
Assist_84
Aided_88
E5
E6
Socsec_88
Assist_88
D2
D1
Welfare_84
Welfare_88
Ideology_84
Party_84
Cultural_84
Cultural_88
D4
D3
Abort_84
E7
ERA_84
E8
Prayer_84
E9
Abort_88
E10
ERA_88
Prayer_88
E11
E12