Date of Award
8-1-2002
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Political Science
Department
Political Science
First Advisor
Dr. Harvey D. Palmer
Second Advisor
Dr. Robert D. Brown
Third Advisor
Dr. Timothy Nordstrom
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
There has been an enormous amount of research on declining partisanship (or dealignment) in the American electorate. The leading view of declining partisanship, promoted by Wattenberg among others, is that the public has become more neutral toward the political parties. According to Wattenberg, this neutrality is a consequence of declining regionalism in party identification and the rise of candidate-centered elections.
An alternative perspective is that negativity underlies the temporal decline in partisanship. In this paper, I will draw upon various strands of the literature to develop a negativity theory of declining partisanship. Using National Election Studies data, I conduct a rigorous and systematic analysis of public attitudes toward the parties. The statistical analysis directly tests the negativity and neutrality hypotheses against each other by determining which hypothesis accounts better for temporal trends in party affect. Additionally, the analysis also considers secondary hypotheses relating to each theory.
It was concluded that the empirical evidence presented in this thesis strongly supports the negativity theory. There was very little, if any support for the neutrality theory. Additionally, among other relevant findings, there was support for a resurgence in partisanship in the early1980s.
Recommended Citation
Wedeking, Justin Paul, "Temporal trends in party affect" (2002). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3494.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/3494