The Role of Issue Partisanship and Party Cues in Voter Decision-Making

• In Event: Partisanship in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The question of whether party or policy matters more in vote choice is a longstanding debate in political science. Evidence on this question is mixed. We argue that the effect of policy positions on vote choice depends on the degree to which party cues are embedded in the issue, which we refer to as the issue’s partisanship. While some studies assert that partisan issues carry more weight in the vote decision than non-partisan issues because they tend to be more salient in the media and more important to voters, partisan issues could also matter less for vote choice since voters can predict the parties’ positions on such issues, and as a result they do not provide voters with any additional information. Moreover, the existing literature draws heavily from the American case in which many policy issues are highly partisan, and as a result may not travel well to less polarized contexts or multiparty systems.

We will test the moderating effect of issue partisanship using a conjoint survey experiment administered among a representative sample of 1500 Canadians, who will perform a task simulating an election between two candidates. In the analysis, we will compare the effect of the candidates’ policy positions on partisan issues (for which the partisan mapping of positions is very clear and well known to voters) to the effect of policy positions on non-partisan issues (for which the partisan mapping is unclear) on vote choice. We will also compare the effect of party cues with the effect of partisan issues, on the one hand, and non-partisan issues, on the other. Our study will shed new light on the unsolved puzzle regarding the relative importance of partisan and non-partisan issues on vote choice. Examining this question in a different context (the Canadian—less polarized—multi-party system), our results will allow us to assess the conditions under which policy plays an important role in the vote decision, and can even be more important than party cues.

Authors

• Sarah Lachance, University of Toronto

• Clareta Treger, University of Toronto

• Peter Loewen, University of Toronto

• Thomas Bergeron, University of Toronto

• Thomas Galipeau, University of Toronto

• Md Mujahedul Islam, University of Toronto

• Blake Lee-Whiting, University of Toronto

• Beatrice Magistro, California Institute of Technology

• Semra Sevi, University of Toronto