POLI 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Discriminant, Unmoved Mover, Party System
Document Summary
Party identification is a sense of belonging to a party, an identification of self with the things that define self. The aggregate stability begins to suggest that attitudes toward self and party are deeply rooted for many voters, unlike most other sorts of attitudes, which are shallow. Macropartisanship = democratic % / (democratic % + republican %) Stability: huge election swings come and go, partisanship doesn"t change much. Democrats are the larger party and have been since new deal. Realignment: the idea of massive movements creating a new party system is not happening. Before, it may have been perceived that partisanship never responds to what is going on in current politics called the unmoved mover. Now we know that isn"t quite true. Partisanship does respond to such things as approval of the president and perceptions of whether the economy is going well or badly. About 2/3 of americans report the same party identification as their parents.
