Polarized Priorities? Issue Salience in the Contemporary American Electorate

• In Event: Party Polarization in Canada and the United States

Abstract

Scholars variously argue that the American electorate has promoted elite polarization, become more ideologically extreme in response to elite behavior, or responded only limitedly to elite change. However, issue salience—the importance that voters attach to specific political issues—is largely absent from these debates. We analyze a unique questionnaire asking respondents to rank order issues according to their personal importance to assess the character and effects of issue priorities in mass political behavior. We find that self-identified Democrats and Republicans maintain distinct and well-structured issue priorities. For voters across levels of political sophistication, we find that issue priorities relate consistently to partisanship and candidate choice, independent of issue positions, and that issue salience is a potential cause of party defection when voters' priorities conflict with their policy preferences.

Authors

• Christopher Hare, University of California, Davis

• Robert N. Lupton, University of Connecticut