Partisanship as Cause, Not Consequence, of Participation

Abstract

In most democracies, citizens who identify with a political party are more likely than non-partisans to turn out to vote. But why is this the case? Does voting foster partisanship, as prominent models of political learning and cognitive dissonance postulate? Or does partisanship encourage voting, as expressive voting models and social identity theory suggest? I introduce the concept of partisan duty to capture the role of partisan social identities in the turnout decision and present new empirical tests of the relationship between partisanship and voting. I leverage a unique institutional arrangement in Chile to establish the direction of causality with a regression discontinuity, and I implement a novel survey design with behavioral outcomes to identify causal mechanisms. Data from the US confirm that the main findings generalize beyond Chile. Electoral participation does not generate partisanship. Instead, partisanship mobilizes voters: it increases the expressive benefits to voting and generates a sense of duty to support one’s partisan group.

Moving toward the Median: Compulsory Voting and Political Polarization

“…One way in which the introduction of CV might increase affective polarization is by increasing the number of people who identify as partisan. The empirical evidence does generally suggest that CV is associated with higher rates of partisan identification among voters and slightly higher strength of partisan attachment (Dalton and Weldon 2007;de Leon and Rizzi 2016;Singh and Thornton 2013), although the finding is not universal (Rau 2022). While there is no consensus regarding the causal effect of partisanship on affective polarization, cross-country data reveal a positive correlation between partisanship and affective polarization (Wagner 2021).…”

Impact of civics education and family on young voter efficacy and turnout

“…Older voters have more experience with voting and have had more time to develop their political values and party preferences. Research shows that people with strong partisan views tend to vote more than people not committed to a particular party or identify as independent (Rau, 2022). In addition, older voters have more practice making voting decisions in the face of uncertainty or not liking candidates nominated by their party.…”