"A State Divided Against Itself?" The Urban Rural Divide in IL politics Senior Thesis (original) (raw)

The Link between Partisan Voting and Polarized Social Identity

2017

While scholars and pundits alike have pointed to increasing partisan a↵ect in the US, there has been little analysis as to how partisan a↵ect impacts voting. Formally, we show that a↵ective polarization may influence voting through an expressive channel, as voters become more likely to vote instinctively, and through an instrumental channel, as voters expect candidates to take decisions that are favorable towards their partisan in-groups. We conduct a laboratory experiment designed to distinguish between the two channels and find that both influence voting. The instrumental impact, however, depends on the degree of polarization in policy preferences. Importantly, our results confirm that a↵ective polarization decreases the electoral prospects of high valence candidates, as voters become more likely to choose based on identity rather than ability.

More than Ideology: Conservative–Liberal Identity and Receptivity to Political Cues

Social Justice Research, 2010

To many commentators and social scientists, Americans’ stances on political issues are to an important extent driven by an underlying conservative–liberal ideological dimension. Self-identification as conservative vs. liberal is regarded as a marker of this dimension. However, past research has not thoroughly distinguished between ideological identity (a self-categorization) and ideology (an integrated value system). This research evaluates the thesis that conservative–liberal identity functions as a readiness to adopt beliefs and attitudes about newly politicized issues that one is told are consistent with the socially prescribed meaning of conservatism–liberalism. In Study 1, conservative–liberal identity, measured in 2000, had an independent prospective effect on support for invading Iraq in 2002 and support for the Iraq war in 2004, controlling for substantive ideology, party identity, and demographics. In Study 2, conservative- and liberal-identifiers adopted stances on farm subsidy policy based on randomly varied cues indicating which ideological group supports which stance. This cue-based influence was mediated by adoption of attitude-supportive beliefs. Discussion addresses the joint impact of political discourse and identity-based social influence on the organization of political attitudes.

The role of group identity in voting

2018

Group identity has been shown to bias social preferences towards favoring the ingroup at the expense of the outgroup and oneself. To study the effects of group identity on voting choices and turnout, I use the minimal group paradigm to assign group identities to both citizens and two candidates. Citizens are then signaled which candidate would yield a higher material payoff for the whole group. Most conflicted subjects (i.e., the ones for which the signal about the right candidate does not correspond to their own group identity) appear to use their information wisely by voting according to their signal. However, on average 40% of the conflicted subjects who choose to vote show support for the ingroup candidate, therefore not acting on their signal. This leads to a welfare decrease and change in election outcomes in 1 out of 5 of the cases. It appears that drawing attention to citizens' group identity can bias their voting decisions leading to a decrease in welfare for all. No st...