Issues and the Transmission of Partisanship

Abstract

This paper examines the transfer of partisanship from parents to children, and in particular the extent to which intergenerational differences in partisanship are motivated by attitudes toward policy issues. In harmony with recent studies of intraindividual changes in partisanship, we find that young voters cling to or stray from their parents' affiliation partly as a function of issue proximities. More important, however, we show the desirability of distinguishing kinds of issues and kinds of partisan change or difference. The hardest, most reflective moves, conversions from one party to the other, are heavily influenced by issues, and especially by relatively hard, economic ones. The easiest, most casual moves, unrealizations from partisanship to independence, are only lightly influenced by issues, and for the most part by relatively easy, racial ones.

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