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Partisanship, Ideology, and the Sorting of the American Mass Public Nicholas T Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2017 Partisanship, Ideology, and the Sorting of the American Mass Public Nicholas T. Davis Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Davis, Nicholas T., "Partisanship, Ideology, and the Sorting of the American Mass Public" (2017). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4484. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4484 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. PARTISANSHIP, IDEOLOGY, AND THE SORTING OF THE AMERICAN MASS PUBLIC A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Political Science by Nicholas T. Davis B.S., Taylor University, 2010 M.S., Louisiana State University, 2015 May 2017 0 DEDICATION To Mb: ever an adventure i Acknowledgments “True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” ~Seneca Pursuing a doctoral degree is an extraordinarily selfish exercise. You spend a great deal of time burning through the assistance and goodwill of your peers and colleagues as you stumble, oftentimes blindly, toward an end shrouded in uncertainty. It is difficult to complete this work without kind, though honest, professional mentors, much less the support of your friends and family. The modal experience of an academic is rejection, and, without the right support system, this endeavor is difficult and lonely. I was blessed, however, with a network of people who made this possible. Jim Garand is an excellent tutor. Ever (sometimes frustratingly) optimistic, Jim’s training and friendship set the foundation for this achievement. He let me swim upriver on my own, yet was always willing to pull me out of unhappy waters when I floundered. Martin Johnson provided a serious and thoughtful voice to my training. This dissertation and my approach to research would poorer if not for his input. Matt Hitt has been like a brother to me. Although his stay was short in Baton Rouge, his friendship endures, as do his pleas for greater economy in my writing (he will, of course, not begrudge me in this instance). Bill Clark is the consummate bureaucrat (and friend). Bill encouraged me to submit the manuscript that would eventually turn into my first publication, and he was always willing to plug me into teaching when my requests to do so turned up tragically late. Mike Henderson, though a late addition to this group, is an excellent scholar and encouragement. Mike read through numerous drafts of my market materials (a laborious and boring task), and they were much better for it. Outside of these committee members, I am grateful for a close-knit group of colleagues and friends. Johanna Dunaway allowed me to partner with her very early on and taught me how to be a good coauthor. I often chafed at her preparedness and meticulous record-keeping, but she taught me to be less careless in the small tasks—an invaluable ii lesson. Chris Weber taught a seminar on political psychology that set the foundation for this dissertation. He is a master number cruncher and a better friend. He also introduced me to Lily Mason who, in turn, shared her love of sorting with me. Lily’s humor is wicked and her insights keen. I am thankful for her friendship—without it, this dissertation would likely be much different. Kirby Goidel and Brian Smentkowski are gentlemen and scholars. Without their humor and good cheer, I feel that I likely would have wound up in a sanatorium. Finally, Wayne Parent’s friendship has been dear to me. Wayne is an evergreen cheerleader who is always willing to grab a cup of coffee or lunch to listen to me bemoan the market wasteland. His generosity is matched only by his quick wit. I am grateful to a number of non-academic co-laborers in this effort. My mother and father supported me (and us) through every step of the way. They knew when I was bored in elementary school and found a capable mentor in Dr. Parish, who took me under her tutelage. That kindness probably changed the trajectory of where a foolish boy with a short attention span would wind up. My mother and father-in-law kindly didn’t reject my (our) plan(s) to move from the beautiful, serine lakes of Minnesota to swampy Baton Rouge. Their willingness to travel to see us made the distance bearable, and John’s Monday morning phone calls kept me sane. Within this familial ecosystem, the love and support from my brothers and sisters has always been constant. Thank you Annie, Mark, Michael, Whitney, and Audra. Finally, there would be no dissertation without the love and support of my partner, Marybeth. Mare, you were way more adventurous than I could have imagined, and, in many respects, you made this dream possible. Thank you for enduring these six years. You put up with an embarrassing amount of bemoaning about how much I hated Reviewer 2, kept us financially sound working jobs you didn’t love while I spent my time reading and writing, and birthed and cared for Theodore with aplomb. Theo is our best work. The epigraph that anchors these acknowledgements is well-suited to describe my thoughts as I conclude this final stage. The future I envisioned at the outset of this process has yet to manifest. However, among the lessons learned these last six years, the sun will rise tomorrow in spite of disappointment (also, reviewer 2 is still a jerk). Life’s richness lies in the family, friends, and memories I have built. In this, I am content. iii Abstract This dissertation is a story about the divisions that characterize the mass public. Specifically, it explores how Americans think about politics, and, in particular, how citizens connect their attitudes, beliefs, and, vitally, ideological identity to their partisan affiliation—a phenomenon known as sorting. Practically, this project proceeds in two parts. In Part 1, I investigate the nature of partisan sorting in the mass public. Chapter 2 reviews the extant scholarly literature regarding partisanship and ideology, or the raw materials of sorting. Drawing on this research, I operationalize two types of sorting in Chapter 3 and compare how different measurement protocols affect the characterization of public opinion. This distinction culminates in Chapter 4, which provides a series of empirical tests that justify partitioning sorting into identity- and policy-based constructs. The second part of this dissertation is devoted to the study of identity-based sorting. Chapter 5 takes up the question of why individuals’ identities converge and conveys that sorting is related to asymmetric perceptions of out-group dissimilarity rather than relative perceptions of between-group differences. Chapter 6 explores how this sorting affects compromise. I discover that, even in the absence of consistent policy preferences, identity sorting is sufficient to decrease an individual’s willingness to accept bipartisanship. Finally, Chapter 7 examines how identity sorting alters the decisional criteria that voters utilize to select political candidates. Here, I show that sorting produces a disconnect between the perceived and objective ideological congruence between voters and their preferred candidate. Sorting, then, is a sufficient condition for pushing citizens toward more extreme candidates—even when individuals’ issue preferences suggest that their “best” candidate is considerably more moderate. Taken as a whole, this dissertation both refines the extant logic of sorting and pushes this research into new territory. In demonstrating that identity-based sorting constitutes a unique and particularly powerful political phenomenon, I reveal why concern over the systematic coherency of mass opinion is, perhaps, misplaced. Instead, it is this identity sorting that contributes to the intemperate and polarized atmosphere that characterizes the state of American politics. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... ii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Sorting and the coherency of public opinion .......................................................... 2 1.2.1 Defining sorting .......................................................................................... 6 1.2.2 What is the extent and nature of sorting?.................................................. 10 1.3
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