Party–Group Ambivalence and Voter Loyalty: Results From Three Experiments

Abstract

Renewed emphasis on the group-based nature of political parties makes understanding the relationship between partisan and group identities essential. How do citizens respond to the internal disconnect between their partisan identity and their other politically salient identities? In addition, do differences in the group-based nature of each party lead to asymmetric effects of party–group ambivalence? Using data from an original survey experiment across three samples—the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, the 2012 Convention Delegate Study, and a 2015 sample from Amazon Mechanical Turk—I find that party–group ambivalence diminishes party loyalty, making respondents less likely to vote for, contribute to, or volunteer for their political party’s candidate. Moreover, the strength of this impact is consistently larger among Republican identifiers than Democratic identifiers. These results suggest that party asymmetry in party coalitions may have an impact on party loyalty.