Religion and Perceptions of Candidates' Ideologies in United States House Elections

Abstract

Using data from the American National Election Studies, Poole-Rosenthal DW-Nominate scores, and data on the religious affiliations of members of the United States House of Representatives, I show that religion has important independent effects on the evaluation of candidates' ideologies. The results suggest that candidates affiliated with evangelical Christianity will tend to be seen as more conservative than ideologically similar candidates from mainline Protestant denominations. Jewish candidates, in contrast, will tend to be seen as more liberal than ideologically similar mainline Protestants. Additionally, the use of religion-based stereotypes varies with frequency of church attendance. These findings attest to the external validity of recent experiment-based research on religion-based political stereotypes. The approach employed here also allows for the estimation of the magnitude of the effects of such stereotypes. The results shed light on both the importance of religion in election campaigns and the factors that influence perceptions of candidates' ideologies more generally.I would like to thank Carey Stapleton for research assistance, and Lynda Powell, Dick Niemi, and Michael Lindsay for their helpful suggestions. I also owe much gratitude to Jim Guth and Tom Rudolph for providing a portion of the data used in the analysis.

Religious Identity and Descriptive Representation

“…Some might argue that religion in America becomes so closely aligned with partisan identity and political ideology that we can no longer distinguish an independent influence of religion on public attitudes (Jacobsmeier 2013; Layman 2001). The evidence presented here suggests that although the dominant political parties in America count on the support of adherents to specific religious traditions, religion continues to independently influence public attitudes about elected officials.…”

“…Those for whom religion is important will be more likely to approve a House member that shares their religious identity than those for whom religion is not important. In addition, religious and partisan identities have become closely aligned in United States politics (Jacobsmeier 2013; Layman 2001), which raises the possibility that what appears to be religious descriptive representation might be partisan-based representation. To account for this, we include an interaction between respondents’ party identification and religion match.…”

“…Second, religion and politics have become intertwined in American politics. Since we know that people use religion as a cue for the political ideology of House members (Jacobsmeier 2013), it is possible that these findings are simply functioning as an instrumental variable for political ideology.…”

“…These effects are strongest among the most religiously committed. The stronger the affiliation with a religious tradition, the more likely someone is to evaluate an elected official's political ideology on the basis of their religious identity, rather than their voting record (Jacobsmeier 2013).…”

Inferring party positions across issue dimensions

“…Research in the US context has found that female candidates are perceived to be more liberal than ideologically similar male candidates (Koch, 2000(Koch, , 2002McDermott, 1997McDermott, , 1998. Similarly, black candidates are judged as more liberal than white candidates (Jacobsmeier, 2015;McDermott, 1998;Sigelman et al, 1995), whereas evangelical candidates are considered more conservative than mainline Protestants which, in turn, are perceived as more conservative than Catholic and Jewish candidates (Jacobsmeier, 2013;McDermott, 2009).…”