Issues, Party and Character: The Moderating Role of Ideological Thinking on Candidate Evaluation

Abstract

We examine ‘heuristic’ and ‘systematic’ candidate-appraisal strategies within a presidential election context. Controlling for political knowledge, we determine whether individual differences in the capacity for ideological thought condition voters' reliance on the major determinants of candidate choice, increasing reliance on policy considerations and decreasing reliance on the heuristic cue of party identification and on perceptions of candidate character when ideological capacity is high, and exerting the opposite effect – decreasing the role of issues and increasing the role of party identification and candidate qualities – when such capacity is low. Using American National Election Studies data from the 1984–2000 period, we find that ideological thinking consistently heightens voters' reliance on issues and decreases their reliance on candidate cues, but only among voters who report being concerned about the outcome of the election. In contrast, the effect of partisanship is stable across levels of ideological thinking and concern about the campaign. We discuss the cognitive processes by which ideological thinking regulates political choice, and assert its centrality in the political decision-making process.

Government Performance and Life Satisfaction in Contemporary Britain

“…Other researchers are content to argue that heuristics can approximate full information processing (e.g., Lupia 1994; Popkin 1991; see also Gigerenzer and Todd 1999). Still others contend that heuristics can badly distort effective decision making (Kuklinski andQuirk 2000, Lavine andGschwend 2006). Perhaps the most important device for making judgments relevant to an emotionally charged matter such as life satisfaction is the affect heuristic (Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991).…”

A Matter of Representation: Spatial Voting and Inconsistent Policy Preferences

“…This task will involve further conceptual clarifications and offer an enriched representation of the ideological structure of the general public. For instance, the supposition that the electorate holds defined positions on cultural but not on economic issues, and how this 50 Carmines and Stimson 1980;Jessee 2010;Knight 1985;Lavine and Gschwend 2006;Wyckoff (1980). 51 Matthews 1979;Rabinowitz and Macdonald 1989.…”

“…14 Bartels 2003, 50. 15 See, e.g., Jessee 2010;Knight 1985;Lavine and Gschwend 2006;Wyckoff 1980. policy views in terms of these platforms. This perspective implies that citizens differ in how strongly ideology constrains their policy preferences.…”

“…Higher standard deviations are taken as an indication of unconstrained, inconsistent policy preferences. Jacoby relies on a different measurement, employing Mokken scaling of answering patterns to measure the degree of ideological thinking about political stimuli (see Jacoby 1995;Lavine and Gschwend 2006). Converse and researchers from the measurement-error tradition rely on correlations in answering patterns at different time points to gauge citizens' inconsistency and (especially) instability in policy preferences (Converse 1964;Hill and Kriesi 2001).…”

Toward a Conceptual Framework of Emotional Relationship Marketing: An Examination of Two UK Political Parties

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