Judd R. Thornton

Political Sophistication and the Dimensionality of Elite and Mass Attitudes, 1980−2004

Among the terms central to the literature on political attitudes have been complexity and constraint, with some scholars asserting that increased complexity—political sophistication—constrains political attitudes to a single ideological dimension while others argue that complexity instead leads to a multidimensional attitude structure. We investigate the role of sophistication in structuring issue attitudes using a unique survey of Democratic and Republican party elites in conjunction with the American National Election Studies (ANES). The two surveys allow us to compare directly the structure of elites’ and mass issue attitudes. We hypothesize that elites’ attitudes are unidimensional and mass attitudes are multidimensional. The difference, we argue, is that political sophistication constrains elites’ attitudes to a single ideological dimension, whereas much of the mass public is not fully capable of making the necessary connections between ideology and issue attitudes. The results of comparisons between elite and mass attitude structures from 1980 to 2004 support our hypotheses.

Vote Intent and Beliefs about Democracy in the United States

Democracy is an abstract and murky concept. This is particularly apparent in the wide variety of beliefs about democracy held by publics around the globe. Within democracies, political parties often define and name themselves with reference to a particular understanding of democracy. This article focuses on this partisan division in understanding democracy. We suggest that parties will attract those who share similar beliefs about democracy. Specifically, we look at whether differences in beliefs about democracy predict party support in the United States. Examining the responses of US participants to the fifth wave of the World Values Survey, we find that differences on a number of “essential” aspects of democracy among individuals predict vote intent (and party identification). Those more likely to understand democracy as a form of government that promotes civil liberties and the redistribution of wealth to protect the vulnerable are more likely to vote Democrat. Those who report stronger associations between democracy and both religious interpretation of laws and severe punishment of criminals are more likely to vote Republican. This research reinforces the idea that policy differences between the two main parties in the United States may derive from different understandings of the role of government in society.

Party Animals: Asymmetric Ideological Constraint among Democratic and Republican Party Activists:

Existing literature shows that Republicans in the mass public demonstrate greater ideological inconsistency and value conflict than Democrats. That is, despite a commitment to the conservative label and abstract belief in limited government, Republican identifiers’ substantive policy attitudes are nonetheless divided. Conversely, Democrats, despite registering lower levels of ideological thinking, maintain relatively consistent liberal issue attitudes. Based on theories of coalition formation and elite opinion leadership, we argue that these differences should extend to Democratic and Republican Party activists. Examining surveys of convention delegates from the years 2000 and 2004, we show that Democratic activists’ attitudes are more ideologically constrained than are those of Republican activists. The results support our hypothesis and highlight that some of the inconsistent attitudes evident among mass public party identifiers can be traced to the internal divisions of the major party coalitions themselves.