Political Sophistication and Support for Group-Specific Equality

• In Event: Attitudes Toward Social Groups

Abstract

The Democratic Party is often described as a coalition of interests that share a common commitment to use government to ameliorate discrimination and various societal inequities. In contrast, the Republican Party is characterized primarily by fealty to conservative ideological symbolism, especially limited government intervention in the economy. Existing research shows that Democrats’ programmatic policy appeals engender greater attitudinal consistency among party elites and mass public identifiers, whereas their Republican counterparts often disconnect conservative ideological attachments from more liberal issue attitudes. In this paper, we propose and test a theory linking political sophistication to attitudes toward group-specific policy proposals designed to benefit particular social groups, namely African Americans, homosexuals and the poor. We expect that political sophistication increases Democrats’ support for group-specific policies, as greater awareness should foster non-group members’ willingness to help the party’s constituent groups and further the party’s core value of equality. We expect that political sophistication will play no demonstrable moderating role in this relationship among Republicans because GOP principles do not demand accommodating group-based interests. Results from the 2008-2016 American National Election Studies (ANES) support our key hypotheses and illuminate group-based differences within and across the major American political parties.

Authors

• Judd R. Thornton, Georgia State University

• Robert N. Lupton, University of Connecticut

• William Myers, University of Tampa