9.6: Partisanship

The party-in-the-electorate is key to any party’s electoral success. A person’s personal attachment to a party is known as his or her partisanship (alternatively called party identification or party ID). For some Americans, this party membership is formal, in the sense that they have officially registered to vote in their state under a party label or have signed up with a national, state, or local party organization. But partisanship can also refer to an informal feeling of belonging or closeness to a party, which need not include formal registration. As shown in Figure 9.3 below, roughly 90% of Americans either describe themselves as members of a major party or admit that they lean toward a major party. (Because self-described leaners tend to think and behave like partisans, they are often lumped in with admitted party members in polls.)

Partisanship functions differently for different people. In an instrumental sense, it can serve as a heuristic, a mental shortcut for making decisions based on limited information. A typical American voting in a general election will be unfamiliar with most candidates on the ballot, especially those seeking lower-level offices such as city council or public utility commissioner. If that voter identifies with a party, however, she can use candidates’ party affiliations as shown on the ballot to help her choose whom to support.

Figure 9.3: Percentage of Americans identifying as Democrats or Republicans (including leaners), 1981–2024 (Source: Gallup)

Voting for candidates solely on the basis of their party affiliation is often criticized as ignorant or unsophisticated, but it is by no means voting blindly. Party identification in the United States contains a great deal of information about a person’s ideology and issue positions. A relatively uninformed voter can encounter an unfamiliar candidate, see that the candidate’s partisanship matches her own, and reasonably assume that she and the candidate agree on abortion, gun control, healthcare, immigration, taxes, and many other issues. Because today’s parties-in-government tend to be ideologically uniform (thanks in part to polarization), most of these assumptions will be correct most of the time.

In addition to being a heuristic, partisanship can also be an identity. If it shapes a person’s social relationships, leisure activities, geographical living preference, involvement in groups and organizations, or self-image, it may be as much of an identity as his or her race, ethnicity, religion, or sex. Like all identities, partisanship is more central or influential for some people than for others. It can also be more or less influential for any particular person at different times depending on the circumstances.

In the United States, partisanship is the single best predictor of vote choice. Not all Democrats vote for Democrats all the time, and not all Republicans vote for Republicans all the time, but Democrats vote for Democrats and Republicans vote for Republicans more consistently than any other group votes for either major party. Again, this consistency is not necessarily a reflection of blind loyalty. If a typical Republican took the time to research the positions of all the candidates on the ballot, he or she would probably still vote for the Republican over the Democrat in almost every instance. The reverse is true for a typical Democrat. Partisan voters use their party identification as a shortcut the same way a driver uses a stoplight to determine when it is safe to proceed through an intersection rather than individually checking each of a dozen or more cars: it is quicker, easier, and usually just as accurate.

Many local elections in the United States are officially nonpartisan. Democrats and Republicans are permitted to run in these elections, but their party affiliations do not appear on the ballot.

Advocates for nonpartisan elections sometimes argue that removing party labels from ballots improves elections by forcing voters to choose candidates based on more than just partisanship. However, this assumes voters won’t figure out which parties the candidates belong to from other sources. Even if they don’t, they might choose based on less relevant criteria, abstain altogether, or even pick randomly. Eliminating a heuristic can lead to better decisions, but it can also lead to worse ones.