The Social-Psychological Measurement of Partisanship

Political Behavior, Vol. 24, No. 3, September 2002 ( 2002)

THE SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICALMEASUREMENT OF PARTISANSHIP

Steven Greene

This article undertakes a comprehensive examination of the social-psychological the-ory behind the concept of partisanship and addresses how well contemporary mea-sures, especially the ubiquitous NES/Michigan measure, accord with contemporarytheories of measurement, attitudes, and group identification. A number of shortcom-ings with the NES measure are discovered and more recent, psychologically informedmeasures that address these shortcomings are explored. After a brief empirical dem-onstration of the utility of these newer measures, recommendations are made for us-ing new theory and new measures to improve our understanding of the role of parti-sanship in influencing political behavior.

Key words: party identification; affect; cognition; social identity theory

INTRODUCTION

Although party identification has had unparalleled success and support instudies of voting behavior for more than 40 years, our common measure ofthe concept is surprisingly lacking in theoretical soundness and complexity.Not to take anything away from the utility of the Michigan/National ElectionStudies (NES) measure in helping us to understand voting behavior, but ithas remained largely uninformed of four decades of development in social-psychological theory. I argue that much of the controversy surrounding parti-sanship (Niemi and Weisberg, 1993, 2001) stems from our attempts to exam-ine a complex, multifaceted psychological concept with a rather blunt instru-ment. At the root of the problem, the Michigan measure confounds theempirically and theoretically distinct psychological concepts of attitude and ofgroup identity. The Michigan measure has been of enormous importance to

Steven Greene, North Carolina State University, Department of Political Science and PublicAdministration, Box 8102, Raleigh, NC 27695 ([email protected]).An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference on Parties, Partisanship, and

Partisan Change at Vanderbilt University, October 25–27, 2001.

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0190-9320/02/0900-0171/0 2002 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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our understanding of political behavior over the last 40 years and promises tocontinue to be in the future. Yet, with the addition of more refined, theoreti-cally based psychological measures of partisanship, we can extend our under-standing of political behavior even further.But where to extend these understandings? Fundamental questions about

the nature of partisanship and how it relates to political activity remain. Justhow stable is partisanship over time? To some degree, we have already seenthat this depends on the measures used (Niemi and Weisberg, 1993). In part,the answer depends on whether we consider partisanship as partisan attitudeor partisanship as group belonging. To that end, we need to measure bothaspects as accurately as possible. Are partisanship and independence separatedimensions or part of a single continuum? Again, it likely depends on whetherwe conceptualize and measure partisanship and independence as attitudes oras group identities. Is partisanship the unmoved mover, causally prior to otherpolitical evaluations or rather a summary response to assessments of candi-dates and issues? Yet again, the answer surely depends in part on whetherpartisanship is measured as group belonging or political attitude. For scholarsof voting, we know that party identification is a key factor in voting decisions,but what aspect of partisanship—group identity? Affective-based attitudes?Cognitive attitudes? In short, improved, psychologically based measures cansurely help us answer these ongoing questions as well as better predict thingswe already do understand. After examining new measures, I return to thisquestions and address how new measures might bring greater insight intothese issues.From a social-psychological perspective, partisanship can be considered un-

der two distinct, yet related theoretical constructs. First, partisanship clearlyfits the psychological definition of an attitude—a generalized and enduringpositive or negative response to an object (Petty and Cacioppo, 1981). Whetherone considers partisanship a longstanding, parentally inherited, affective orien-tation (Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes, 1960; Miller and Shanks,1996), an endogenous product of evaluations of parties, candidates, and theeconomy (Fiorina, 1981; Franklin and Jackson, 1983), or a complex schemaof related political attitudes (Hamill and Lodge, 1986; Rahn, 1993), there is animplicit agreement that partisanship represents an evaluative response towardpolitical parties.Second, few would challenge that party identification represents an instance

of the social-psychological concept of group identification. Campbell et al.(1960) refer to party identification as fundamentally similar to religious, racial,and ethnic identification. In numerous studies, party identification serves asthe basis for group comparisons, that is, comparing education, income, racialcomposition, gender balance, and of course policy opinions of Democrats andRepublicans (Stanley and Niemi, 1996). Studies of ideology and public opin-

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ion (Zaller, 1992) and presidential approval (Edwards and Gallup, 1990) wouldnot think of undertaking analyses without separating persons into Democraticand Republican groups. As with partisanship as an attitude toward parties,then, it is likewise clear that partisanship is also fundamentally accepted as ameasure of group belonging.Much like the concept of partisanship itself, the primary measure we use,

the two-part Michigan measure, has been repeatedly challenged over theyears, but remains preeminent. Other proposed measures, such as feelingthermometers, open-ended items, and party closeness scales, have receivedminimal long-term support. This primary measure we use has been with usfor over 40 years essentially unchanged, yet social-psychological theory onattitudes and group identification have advanced substantially. Although theauthors of The American Voter gave us party identification at the center ofwhat is often referred to as the social-psychological model of voting behavior,there seems to be surprisingly little social-psychological theory behind thechosen 2-item measure (Weisberg and Greene, in press). Furthermore, a re-view of the many alternative measures of party identification (Weisberg, 1999)reveals very little reliance on social-psychological measurement theory in theseoperationalizations.In order to find the most appropriate measures to address important ques-

tions about party identification, I undertake a comprehensive examination ofmeasures of partisanship and how well they accord with contemporary social-psychological theories of measurement of attitudes and group identification.After a brief overview of the Michigan measure of party identification, I ex-plore measures of attitudes, with special focus on the affective and cognitivecomponents of attitude measurement. The second major section of this articlefocuses on measures of group identity and how well they accord with andcomplement traditional partisan measures. In each section I make recommen-dations for how our measures of partisanship can be improved to better accordwith what psychological measurement theory has to tell us. I follow this witha brief analysis of original data that demonstrates the utility in using some ofthese more refined measures. I conclude with practical recommendations forfuture research using supplemental social-psychological based measures ofpartisanship.

THE MICHIGAN/NES MEASURE OF PARTISANSHIP

In order to have a meaningful basis for comparison, it is necessary to startwith a review of the Michigan measure and its shortcomings. This familiarmeasure of partisanship consists of a two-part question. The first part: “Gener-ally speaking, do you usually consider yourself to be a Democrat, Republican,Independent, or other.” For those who choose Democrat or Republican, the

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second part is “Do you consider yourself to be a strong Democrat (Republi-can) or not so strong Democrat (Republican)?” For those answering Indepen-dent or no preference in the first part, the second query is: “Do you consideryourself to be closer to the Democratic party, the Republican party, or nei-ther?” Using these questions in conjunction results in the customary 7-pointscale ranging from strong Democrat at one end to strong Republican at theother.A surface examination reveals that the Michigan measure is clearly assessing

both partisanship as an attitude toward parties (e.g., “are you a strong or notso strong Democrat/Republican”) as well as the group identification aspect(“generally speaking, do you consider yourself”) In fact, what we seem to bedoing with this measure is conflating two related, yet conceptually distinct,elements of partisanship into a single measure. Insofar as we consider parti-sanship an attitude, the first question in the measure would seem to measureattitudes toward the parties on only the most superficial level. Obviously, therewill most likely be some positive attitude toward the party one chooses toidentify with, but many important problems remain. Copious evidence indi-cates that many Independents choose not to identify as a Democrat or Repub-lican, yet would seem to have positive attitudes toward one of these parties(Keith et al., 1992). Political independence likely represents something otherthan complete neutrality toward both parties (Dennis, 1988, 1992), but oncethis option is chosen, one cannot really properly assess attitudes toward eitherparty. When a person does choose to identify as a Democrat or Republican,the follow-up question’s strong or not so strong choice does then provide usa more proper attitude measure, yet it is ultimately a crude dichotomizationof what is surely a broad range. Furthermore, even assuming a fairly highnegative correlation between Democratic and Republican attitudes, we areleft with an even cruder measure of attitude toward the opposition party.Despite its proven value for the study of political behavior, our traditionalmeasure of partisanship nonetheless at best seems to be an insufficient mea-sure of attitudes toward political parties.On its face, the Michigan measure clearly is better suited to measuring

partisanship as group belonging than as an attitude. In asking, “do you thinkof yourself as” responses to the first question are clearly relying on self-catego-rization as a group member—a central element of social identity theory (Taj-fel, 1978), today’s dominant social-psychological theory for understanding rela-tionships between individuals and groups. There is again, though, the problemof Independents. Just because a person chooses Independent does not meanthat they have no group identity with Democrats or Republicans (Greene,2000). Even for partisans, though, measures of group belonging are inade-quate in compressing a broad continuum of identity down to strong or not sostrong. In short, the Michigan measure is clearly more suited to its role as ameasure of group identity, but even here it has significant shortcomings.


The end result of these problems in measuring attitudinal and group be-longing aspects of partisanship and independence based on this two-part ques-tion is that the 7-point scale would seem to confound the theoretically andempirically distinct concepts of partisan group belonging and partisan attitude.In short, from both a measurement perspective and the perspective of social-psychological theory, the Michigan measure is useful but problematic. Theremainder of this article examines what more appropriate measures of parti-sanship might look like and how they can better contribute to our understand-ing of political behavior.

MEASURING THE ATTITUDINAL BASIS OF PARTY IDENTIFICATION

Developed within experimental laboratories, psychological measurement ofattitudes generally relies on multi-item scales. Unfortunately, the use of sev-eral measures to assess a single concept is at odds with the large-scale, nationalpublic opinion surveys (for example, NES, General Social Survey), used toassess most political attitudes. Certainly our measures, including partisanship,are less reliable to the degree that they rely on one or two items (Greenand Palmquist, 1990). Contemporary attitude measurement, however, reliesprominently on scales that use many items to measure a single attitude (Eaglyand Chaiken, 1993).Although political scientists most commonly use Likert scales (e.g., several

items given the options of strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, stronglydisagree), the most common form of attitude assessment within psychology issemantic differentials. These measures consist of a series of bipolar adjectivescales, for example, good—bad, happy—sad, like—dislike, generally sepa-rated into seven categories. Respondents check a category on each of thesebipolar continuums. Scores on individual items are summed or averaged tocreate a total attitude score. The semantic differential scales, though perhapsnot as well suited for the phone surveys common to political research, havegained widespread popularity because of their ready applicability across a vari-ety of attitude objects. These scales usually use very general evaluative terms(e.g., good, bad, valuable, or worthless), that can be applied to almost anyattitude object (Crites, Fabrigar, and Petty, 1994). Eagly and Chaiken (1993),in fact, suggests a clear applicability to political topics: “Using the technique,a researcher might find out, for example, whether respondents are more favor-able toward Republicans than Democrats or toward affirmative action in col-lege admissions than affirmative action in employment.”Party identification, as central a concept as it is in American political behav-

ior, has never been measured using either Likert or semantic scales in a majorstudy. Most likely, this is because political scientists have generally failed toseparate conceptually party identification as an attitude toward parties fromparty identification as group belonging. A basic principle in measurement, of

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course, is that measures be reliable and valid. Clearly, part of the problem isthat the two-question measure, each assessing a different aspect of partisan-ship, does not provide the reliability of a multi-item scale. Furthermore, inso-far as we treat partisanship as an attitude but use a measure more designedto measure group affiliation, there are serious concerns of validity. Given theconcerns with the Michigan measure discussed both here and earlier, we areled to the question of how do alternative measures of partisanship fare inassessing partisanship as an attitude toward parties?The most likely choice for a valid and effective measure of attitudes toward

the parties would be the often-used party feeling thermometer measures. Forthis purpose, these measures would seem to have many advantages lacking inthe Michigan measure. First of all, there is no question of group belonging—the respondent is simply asked to rate the parties on a 0–100 scale. Further-more, the respondent is asked to rate both parties, enabling a more completeassessment of partisan attitudes. The party differential scale—party A minusparty B—can therefore be seen as a fairly effective summary of partisan atti-tudes. In short, it would seem that the feeling thermometers represent a defi-nite improvement over the traditional measure in assessing the attitudinal ba-sis of partisanship; nonetheless, important shortcomings remain.On the surface, there are two clear shortcomings in the question wording

of the feeling thermometers. First, partisanship is generally conceived of as alongstanding attachment (Campbell et al., 1960; Niemi and Weisberg, 1993),yet there is nothing in the feeling thermometer question wording to try assessthe long-term nature of this attitude. Second, these measures are commonlyused as indicators of general attitude toward a party, yet they were designedsolely to measure the affective component of partisan attitudes—just one ofthe three global components of affect, cognition, and behavior. The languageof the feeling thermometer, though, is phrased in strictly emotional terms,feel, warm, and cold. We can generally expect the affective component of anattitude to be highly correlated with the overall evaluation, but this is notalways the case (Chaiken, Pomerantz, and Giner-Sorolla, 1995). Even if re-spondents ignore the emotion-laden words and treat it as a overall evaluationmeasure, it would still be a more effective measure if anchored by terms suchas like—dislike or good—bad. The party thermometers would seem to be aneffective measure of the affective component (and perhaps evaluation as well)of partisanship, yet it remains a significantly imperfect measure for an overallassessment of attitudes toward parties.Weisberg (1999) describes a number of other measures of partisan attitudes

(party support scale, direct rating scale, and party competence evaluations).Although each of these has some merit, they are not necessarily well suitedto measuring attitudes toward parties. The party closeness scale seems to havemany desirable properties of reliability and predictive validity, but in assessinghow “close” one feels to the party, the language would seem to indicate that


this measure, much like the traditional 2-item measure, confounds party atti-tudes and party belonging. Green and Schickler (1993) conclude that the di-rect rating scale, in which respondents simply place themselves on the tradi-tional 7-point party continuum, has technical properties superior to the 2-itemmeasure, yet it still shares the same conceptual problems discussed above.Finally, the party image scale, used most prominently by Wattenberg in hisDecline of American Political Parties (1998) books, has significant shortcom-ings. This scale simply sums open-ended likes/dislikes of each party to createa summary measure. On a conceptual level, the open-ended nature presentsa significant problem, as one person’s “I just love the Democratic party” ulti-mately equals another’s “I liked that Kennedy guy.” Furthermore, a lack ofverbosity is ultimately confounded with a lack of partisan attitudes (Stangaand Sheffield, 1987).

Future Prospects for Measuring Partisan Attitudes

Among existing measures, it would seem that the feeling thermometer likelycomes closest to giving us a true measure of attitudes toward the parties.There is no element of group belonging in the measure, and it is able to allowfor an assessment of attitude strength across a broad 0–100 continuum. Asdiscussed earlier, however, it remains a far from perfect measure. What then,should an ideal measure of partisan attitudes look like? First, we clearly needto use a multi-item measure. As already suggested by Eagly and Chaiken(1993), partisanship would seem quite well suited to measurement with se-mantic differential scales. Practically speaking, this would not seem to repre-sent an overwhelming difficulty. Greene (1999) used this system without ma-jor difficulty in a regional mail survey. A response to a set of only three orfour bipolar semantic scales on a national survey can give us a much morevalid and reliable assessment of partisan attitudes than any existing measures.Were semantic differential scales to be considered impractical, perhaps for aphone survey, Likert scales asking respondents how well general terms suchas “like,” and “good” fit the parties would be similarly appropriate (Crites etal., 1994). Including such measures toward both the Democrats and Republi-cans on a national political survey would offer great potential for us to clearlysee how partisan attitudes are related to partisan belonging, ideology, votechoice, and so on, independent of the effects of partisan group identification.

Measuring Partisan Attitude Structure:Affective and Cognitive Components

The internal structure of partisan attitudes has likewise been an area ofsome focus among scholars of partisanship (Gant and Luttbeg, 1987; Rahn,1993), yet again is based on measures not particularly well suited to this type

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of analysis. Attitudes are generally thought to consist of cognitive, affective, andbehavioral components, which together form a global attitude (Eagly andChaiken, 1993; Petty and Cacioppo, 1981). The cognitive component consists ofan individual’s beliefs about the attitude object; the affective component consistsof feelings, moods, and emotions experienced in relation to an attitude object;the behavioral component reflects a person’s actions toward the attitude object(Eagly and Chaiken, 1995). An attitude is an overall, abstract evaluation of anobject, which can be primarily based on either affective, cognitive, or behavioralcomponents (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993; Zanna and Rempel, 1988). In order toassess the affective and cognitive characteristics of attitudes, social psychologistsexamine the discrepancy between evaluation and cognition and the discrepancybetween evaluation and affect. As the evaluative-cognitive consistency and theevaluative-affective consistency become greater (i.e., the smaller the discrepanc-ies), the strength of the attitude become greater (Chaiken et al., 1995).Although social-psychologists studying affect and cognition have had some

success using open-ended measures (Eagly, Mladinic, and Otto, 1994; Had-dock and Zanna, 1998), the large-scale surveys of political scientists necessarilyentail the use of close-ended measures. In the most comprehensive effort toaccurately assess affective and cognitive attitude components with closed-ended measures, Petty and colleagues (Crites, Fabrigar, and Petty, 1994; Fa-brigar and Petty, 1999) used separate series of semantic differential scales toassess overall evaluation, affective response, and cognitive response, across avariety of attitude objects. With these scales, Crites et al. have been able toempirically separate affective and cognitive attitude components with mea-sures proven to be equally reliable and valid in separately assessing both affectand cognition. The measurement strategy was also designed to be universallyapplicable across attitude objects and should thus be entirely applicable to thepresent study of political parties.1 Given that Petty, Fabrigar, and Wegener(in press) find no evidence of a clear advantage for either open-ended orclose-ended measures, ease of use in surveys would strongly argue for a strat-egy focused on close-ended measures.Political scientists have tried to explore the affective and cognitive bases of

partisan attitudes, but until recently these efforts have been hampered bypoorly suited measures. Gant and Luttbeg (1987), Dalton (1984), Rahn (1993),Richardson (1991), and others have all addressed affect and cognition in parti-sanship, but in nearly all cases these authors have been forced to “make do”with measures intended for other purposes and therefore lacking the psycho-logical specificity of the concepts they were exploring. For example, Daltonrelied on party closeness scales as an indicator of affect, and Gant and Luttbegessentially used political knowledge as a measure of partisan cognition. Inmany cases, affect has been assumed to be measured in the traditional mea-sure and only cognition has been closely examined, invariably with an entirely


different measurement system (e.g., knowledge questions, focus on schemas).A few more recent efforts have, however, relied more closely on psychologicaldevelopments in the study of the affective and cognitive bases of attitudes.Using a geographically limited mail sample, Greene (1999) adopted mea-

sures from Crites et al. (1994) in which evaluation, affect, and cognition wereeach measured on corresponding semantic differential scales (see Appendix Afor detail). The reliability for each scale exceeded alpha = .9. With these mea-sures, affect and cognition could be directly compared for their impact andcould also be compared with overall evaluation to determine affective or cog-nitive predominance in partisan attitudes. Greene found considerable varia-tion across the sample in the affective and cognitive bases of partisan attitudes,with more persons’ attitudes corresponding closely to their cognitive assess-ments. He found that whether a partisan attitude was more based on affector cognition had important implications for political behaviors (e.g., split-ticketvoting) as well as related attitudes (e.g., ideology).Although Weisberg and Hasecke’s (1999) primary focus was on social iden-

tity theory, they also made an effort to find more appropriate measures ofpartisan affect and cognition in a series of measures included in the 1998 TheOhio Political Survey (TOPS). Rather than borrowing from social psychology,they modified NES measures traditionally used to examine attitudes towardcandidates (see Appendix A for details). In order to assess the cognitive basesof partisan attitudes, they used the candidate trait measures (e.g., hardwork-ing, intelligent, moral, etc.) applied to the parties. Likewise, they adoptedcandidate affect measures (e.g., has X ever made you feel angry, proud, etc.)with the parties as objects. Not only was the specific question wording adopted,but so were the response categories. Consequently, the cognitive items werebased on five response categories (strongly agree to strongly disagree), whereasaffect measures allowed a simple dichotomous response (have or have notexperienced particular emotion). Using these measures, Weisberg and Ha-secke found that both affect and cognitive elements appear to contribute topartisan strength, although affect has a larger role.The Weisberg and Hasecke (1999) analysis makes clear that affect and cog-

nition are both important parts of how we think about traditional partisanstrength. The weakness in this approach is that both the trait and affect itemswere explicitly designed to be used with candidates. Eagly and Chaiken (1993)discuss this as a potential problem in the use of Likert scales such as these.The measures are only as valid and reliable as the chosen response categories,and although some may be suitable for both parties and candidates, there areenough differences between the two that this should be some cause for con-cern. The damage is not so great in the case of trait scales where alpha levelsare over .85. But the affect scales, relying on simple dichotomous response(e.g., “Has the Democratic party every made you feel angry?”) do not achieve

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reliability much above .5. As for considering the role of affective and cognitivecomponents on an equal basis, Crites et al. (1994) discuss the problematicnature in doing so when affective and cognitive components are measured ondifferent types of scales and have different levels of reliability, as is the casehere.The most recent attempt to address the measurement of affect and cogni-

tion in partisanship was undertaken by Roscoe and Christiansen (2001) in a2001 survey of Michigan residents. Roscoe and Christiansen take an approachsimilar to Weisberg and Hasecke, but rather than use standard NES traitmeasures, they create their Likert scales using items more suitable for usewith measuring cognitive response to political parties specifically (e.g., “I thinkthe Republican party will steer the country in the right direction”; see Appen-dix A for full list). For the affect terms, they use the same terms as in theNES (proud, angry, hopeful), plus additional similar terms (sad, nervous,happy, calm, safe). Unlike NES and Weisberg and Hasecke (1999), they useidentical response options (agree, disagree, neither) for both the affect andcognition question batteries. All four scales (two scales for each party) proveto be highly reliable with alpha levels over .9. Using these similarly reliablemeasures, they find both affective and cognitive components to significantlypredict overall partisan attitudes. Perhaps their most interesting findings areon the impact of consistency (or lack thereof) between affective and cognitivecomponents. They find a nice monotonic pattern in which consistency be-tween cognitive and affective components of attitudes toward both partiesincreases as one moves from pure independent to leaner, to weak partisan,to strong partisan. Additionally, higher consistency predicted greater politicalengagement and straight-ticket voting.Roscoe and Christiansen (2001) have clearly demonstrated a seemingly reli-

able and valid measurement strategy for assessing the affective and cognitivecomponents of partisanship that yields interesting and important results. Per-haps the most significant shortcoming in their study is that although partisanaffect and cognition appear to be effectively measured, they still rely on theflawed feeling thermometer measure for the assessment of overall partisanattitudes. Although this measure is quite often treated as an overall evaluation,rather than just affective response, the explicitly emotional wording of themeasure makes its use highly questionable in assessing how affect and cogni-tion independently contribute to overall attitudes.

Future Prospects for Measuring Affective and CognitiveComponents of Partisanship

Although Roscoe and Christiansen’s (2001) study is geographically limited,it certainly appears that they have found a system of measuring affective andcognitive partisan components that accords well with contemporary social-


psychological theory in the area. Their scale for measuring cognitive responsehas significant face validity and is clearly different from the measures of affec-tive response. It also appears to be superior to the Weisberg and Hasecke(1999) modified candidate measures in being designed specifically for use withparties. Nonetheless, we cannot yet be fully confident that these measures areassessing solely cognitive attitude bases. The Crites et al. (1994) semanticscales adopted by Greene (1999) have been experimentally shown to be validindicators of affect and cognition. Ideally, it would be nice to validate theRoscoe and Christiansen measures by comparing them to the Crites et al.measures.Of course, all of these problems could be avoided by using semantic differ-

entials as those used by Greene (1999). The extensive work that Petty andcolleagues (Crites et al., 1994; Fabrigar and Petty, 1999; Petty et al., in press)have done in creating and validating these items as general measures of atti-tudes regardless of the attitude object, in addition to Greene’s interestingresults, suggest that this would seem to be a very valid and reliable measure-ment strategy for assessing partisan affect and cognition. Were an alternativeto the semantic differential scales be desired for use in a telephone survey,the dichotomous checklist presents a more parsimonious measure. Crites etal. (1994) found the dichotomous checklist, in which respondents indicatedthat each word did or did not describe their feelings toward the object, traitsof the object, or their attitude toward the object, was only slightly less reliablethan the semantic differential scales and had similarly high quality and stablepsychometric properties.In terms of practical considerations for what partisan attitudes to implement

in the future, perhaps the strongest case can be made for the Roscoe andChristiansen (2001) measures. These measures have the advantages of an ap-propriate format for a telephone political survey, proven reliability on a ran-dom statewide sample, and strong face validity for assessing the appropriateconcepts. Nonetheless, it may also prove worthwhile to strongly consider usinga more general measure of attitude components (Greene 1999). The advan-tage of the general approach is that studies by Petty and Fabrigar (Crites etal., 1994; Fabrigar and Petty, 1999) have assured us not only of the reliabilityof these measures but their validity as well. Additionally, if one of the goals ofa research project is to assess fairly the relative contributions of partisan affectand partisan cognition (e.g., in partisan stability, in vote choice, etc.), we canbe more confident when they are both assessed on equally general scales.Finally, it must be reiterated that if we are genuinely motivated to better

understand the psychological structure of partisanship, we need a clear, gen-eral measure of political party evaluation. The precise roles of affect and cog-nition and how they vary across the public can only be properly assessed ifthere is an unbiased measure of overall partisan evaluation on which to com-pare them. Any study that seeks to measure affective and cognitive compo-

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nents of partisanship would be wise to heed the admonitions stated in theearlier portion of this article and incorporate a more general evaluative mea-sure instead of the commonly used feeling thermometer scale.

PARTY IDENTIFICATION AS GROUP BELONGING

The concept of group identity is central to Campbell et al.’s (1960) originalconceptualization of party identification in The American Voter. They arguethat persons look to political parties as meaningful social reference groupswith which they identify. In other words, much as one self-identifies as aBlack, Hispanic, Protestant, Catholic, Puerto Rican, and so on, one may iden-tify as a Democrat or Republican. Based on the social psychology of grouprelations at the time, this was a surprisingly prescient understanding. The ref-erence group theory that Campbell et al. rely on has not been disproved ordelegitimized, but seemingly discarded as social psychologists have movedonto the more conceptually powerful social identity theories (Weisberg andGreene, in press). More importantly, however, the group belonging aspect ofpartisanship has largely been ignored in the focus on partisanship as an atti-tude toward a political party: “an affective orientation towards an importantgroup-object” (Campbell et al., 1960). Perhaps not coincidentally, the mostcontested areas of research on partisanship—the stability, dimensionality, andcausal ordering—all leave aside the question of the psychological investmentin the political party as a group. Bringing a proper conceptualization and mea-surement of partisan group belonging back into the picture may help withthese difficult issues.The authors of the American Voter were writing before the development

of social identity theory began in the late 1960s and 1970s, yet in stressing therole of self-defined identification, their understanding of partisanship as groupbelonging is more limited than, yet clearly in accord with, social identity the-ory. Social identity theory and its variants have developed into the dominantparadigm for understanding intergroup relations (Brewer and Brown, 1998).In Tajfel’s (1978) influential conceptualization, social identity is defined as“that part of an individual’s self concept which derives from his knowledge ofhis membership of a group (or groups) together with the value and emotionalsignificance attached to the membership” (p. 63). The theory holds that indi-viduals attempt to maximize differences between the ingroup (the group towhich one psychologically belongs) and the outgroup (psychologically relevantopposition group) and thus perceive greater differences between one’s in-group and the relevant outgroup than actually exist and show favoritism to-ward ingroup members (Tajfel and Turner, 1986). These social identificationsare not based on any formal group membership but rather self-perceivedmembership in a particular group. The closely related self-categorization the-


ory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, and Wetherell, 1987) has an essentiallysimilar understanding of group belonging but argues that cognitive processesalone are sufficient to create the differences in group perceptions. For presentpurposes, both can be considered part of a social identity approach that em-phasizes self-categorization with relevant ingroups.Ingroup social identity has been measured with a variety of scales, all of

which seek to assess the general concept of the degree of psychological attach-ment to a particular group. Ideally, we could compare measures of partisanbelonging with the leading scale used to measure social identity, but unfortu-nately there is much debate and controversy as to exactly what underlyingconcepts to measure with a social identity scale (Jackson and Smith, 1999).Various important studies contend that social identity consists of one, two, andeven three or more distinct dimensions. Without clear direction from socialpsychology, it makes sense to examine those studies that have attempted toexplore the social identity of partisanship.There are two sets of studies examining partisan social identity in other

nations that have the most relevance to the current discussion. Duck andcolleagues (Duck, Hogg, and Terry, 1995; Duck, Terry, and Hogg, 1998) havefound considerable evidence for the impact of social identity among Australianpartisans. Rather than using a traditional social identity scale, they focused onindicators such as the extent to which respondents described themselves as asupporter of a party and respondents’ commitment to a political ideology.They had several findings in keeping with social identity theory, most promi-nently in the way social identity impacted how partisans perceived the mediato influence both their in-group and political outgroups (Duck et al., 1995).Kelly’s studies of British political parties rely on more traditional social iden-tity scales (Kelly, 1988, 1989, 1990a, 1990b). Kelly adapts Brown, Condor,Matthews, Wade, and Williams’s (1986) social identity scale for use with Brit-ish parties (see Appendix B for the full scale). Respondents answered 10 ques-tions such as: “It is important to me that I support this party” and “I feelstrong ties with other people who support this party.” Kelly consistently foundsupport for predictions of social identity theory with regard to perceptions ofthe intergroup context, majority–minority group differences, and perceptionsof homogeneity within political ingroups and outgroups.Obviously, where there is little consensus among social psychologists there

is no clear standard with which to assess how political scientists have measuredthe group aspect of partisanship. Nonetheless, there is fairly strong theoreticalagreement on a basic theory of social identification with which we can assesshow well existing measures of partisanship perform. Although the Michiganmeasure is superficially an appropriate measure of partisan group identifica-tion, it is clearly inferior to the multi-item scales commonly used to studysocial identity. In allowing only two levels of identification and completely

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excluding partisan social identification for Independents, even leaners, a greatdeal of potential information is lost. Insofar as group identification measurescan help us to understand and predict things about political attitudes thatpartisanship as an attitude may not necessarily do, this is a nontrivial loss.When we turn to the commonly used alternative measures of partisanship,

they would seem to fare considerably less well at capturing partisan socialidentification. This is likely no coincidence but rather results from the factthat scholars have made an implicit attempt to more directly measure partyidentification as an attitude since the original measure is most clearly a mea-sure of group identification. Among the measures mentioned earlier in thisarticle, the feeling thermometers and party image measures would seem tohave no direct bearing on self-identified group membership. While there isundoubtedly a correlation between value of one’s group membership and apositive attitude toward a party, they are distinct psychological concepts. Onecan imagine giving a party a high score without actually belonging, much asone might give a high feeling thermometer rating to “Blacks” or “poor people”without being a member of either group. Likewise, in summing party likesand dislikes, the party image scales similarly fail to capture the central compo-nent of group self-identification. Perhaps the most appropriate alternative isthe party closeness scale in which respondents assess the degree to which theyfeel close to a given political party. This sense of closeness would seem to bequite similar to what we mean by group belonging and in all likelihood corre-lates substantially with partisan social identification, but the closeness measurestill lacks the fundamental aspect of self-identification with the political partyas a group. It probably serves as a better measure of group identification thanfeeling thermometers and party image scales, but whether it would be supe-rior to the Michigan measure in this regard seems unlikely and would needto be resolved with empirical testing.Two recent efforts in the study of party identification measurement have

been directly informed by social identity theory and have tried to incorporatethese measurement issues into their research design. Greene (1999, 2000) andWeisberg and Hasecke (1999) used measures of social identity taken fromsocial-psychological research and applied them to use in the study of Americanpolitical parties. Greene used the full 10-item Identification with a Psychologi-cal Group (IDPG; Mael and Tetrick, 1992) scale with respondents’ preferredparty (including leaners) and with “people who call themselves political inde-pendents.” Items seek to address the typicality and depersonalization of groupmembership with questions such as: “when someone criticizes this group, itfeels like a personal insult,” “I have a number of qualities typical of membersof this group,” and “this group’s successes are my successes.” (a full listing ofscale items can be found in Appendix B).In the Greene (1999) study, the IDPG measures proved quite reliable, with


alphas over .85 with both political parties and political independents as refer-ence groups. Not surprisingly, Greene found partisan social identity to besignificantly correlated with the Michigan measure (r = .48). Partisan socialidentity also increased monotonically with strength of partisanship on theMichigan measure. Nonetheless, partisan social identity contributed an ex-planatory role above and beyond that of the Michigan measure in predictingparty feeling thermometers, ideology, and party-line voting. Greene (2000)also found that many independent leaners do have nontrivial levels of socialidentification with their preferred party, yet it is usually lower than levels ofsocial identification with other independents.In their focus on explaining partisan strength, Weisberg and Hasecke (1999)

likewise use the IDPG to assess partisan social identity, albeit a truncatedversion of four items (see Appendix B). Since attitudes toward ingroups andoutgroups are not necessarily related (Brewer and Brown, 1998), Weisbergand Hasecke measure social identity toward both the Democratic and Repub-lican party for all respondents. Using only a 4-item scale, the reliability (.74)was somewhat lower than Greene’s (1999). Like Greene, they find partisansocial identity to be a significant component of partisan strength as measuredwith the Michigan items. They also find a significant impact for partisan socialidentity on voting behavior, candidate assessments, and presidential approval.In sum, using a well-tested social identity scale, both Greene and Weisbergand Hasecke were able to find valid and reliable measures of partisan groupidentification that were significantly related to the Michigan items, yet con-tributed important additional explanatory power to understanding politics.

Future Prospects for the Study of Group Identity in Partisanship

It would seem that in the case of measuring partisan group identification,there is a more clearly marked path on which to proceed. Both Greene (1999)and Weisberg and Hasecke (1999) have demonstrated the utility of a psycho-logically informed social identity scale for American party identification. Theirfindings indicate that a specific scale, the IDPG, indeed captures an importantgroup element of party identification not fully measured in the traditionalMichigan measure. On the positive side for the Michigan measure, bothGreene, and Weisberg and Hasecke indicate that it is already measuring groupidentification to a significant degree. The existing findings about the morepotent explanatory powers of group identification measures, at least in Ohio,strongly suggest that it is worthwhile to pursue such a measurement strategyusing the IDPG, or similar instrument, on a national scale.Although the IDPG certainly seems worth further use in the study of parti-

san group identity, there are a number of well thought of alternative measuresof social identification that merit consideration. Kelly’s (1988) modification of

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Brown et al.’s (1986) social identity scale has demonstrated many properties ofsocial identity theory in the European context. In Jackson and Smith’s (1999)comprehensive comparison of social identity instruments, both Kelly’s andBrown et al.’s scales fared quite well. Jackson’s and Smith’s analyses also sug-gest that Karasawa’s (1991) Identification scale and Hinkle, Taylor, Fox-Car-damone, and Crook’s (1989) Group Identification scale are reliable measuresof social identity that capture multiple important dimensions. In light of thediscussion in the previous section of this article, the Hinkle et al. scale mayprove particularly interesting for use in the study of party identification as ithas specific affective and cognitive subscales, which would obviously be ofinterest in conjunction exploring the affective and cognitive bases of partisanattitudes.

AN EMPIRICAL DEMONSTRATION

It is all well and good to cite examples of recent research that has benefitedfrom using newer, refined measures of attitudes and group belonging, but thecase is, of course, stronger if there is some actual data and findings to back itup. Here, then, I briefly present two tables of six regression models that dem-onstrate that at the most basic level, the utility of these methods in improvingour explanatory power of political attitudes and behavior. Using data collectedfor Greene (1999), the regression models address the following attitudinaldependent variables: party feeling thermometer differentials, candidate ther-mometer differentials, and issue positions; and the following behavioral de-pendent variables: split-ticket vote, partisan activity levels, and over-time partyvote. Due to the small sample size in the study and the lack of differencesbetween Democratic and Republican responses, the parties are grouped to-gether and analyses are performed based on preferred versus nonpreferredparty: for Democrats party differential is Democratic FT − Republican FT,whereas the converse is true for Republican identifiers. Thermometer differ-entials therefore run on a 100 to −100 scale. Issue position is based on meanscores on government services, government jobs, and affirmative action on 7-point scales. Straight-ticket vote is coded 1 for a straight-ticket vote in 1996,0 otherwise. Over-time support is a 5-point scale based on respondent recallof supporting the preferred party in past elections. Party activity level is aseries of six items measuring partisan activity, for example, contributing moneyto a party, attending a rally, voting in a primary.The two independent variables of interest are a summary measure of affec-

tive and cognitive attitude components—cognitive-affective discrepancy—anda measure of partisan social identity, using the IDPG scale (as shown in Ap-pendix B). The discrepancy scores are based on semantic differentials as de-scribed in Greene (1999) and follow from Crites, Fabrigar, and Petty (1994).


Affective discrepancy scores were created by taking the absolute value of thedifference between the affective score and the evaluation score for each party.Cognitive discrepancy scores were created in similar fashion. The values ofthese scales could range from 0, indicating complete affective or cognitiveagreement with evaluation, to 6, indicating maximum discrepancy. The smallerthe discrepancy, the more the attitude can be considered to be based onthe particular component (Crites et al., 1994). An overall cognitive/affectivediscrepancy measure, affective discrepancy score minus the cognitive discrep-ancy score, was created to represent the relative balance of affective and cog-nitive attitude components toward one’s preferred party. The scale theoreti-cally ranges from 6, representing an attitude based entirely on cognition, to−6, indicating an attitude based entirely on affect. Zero reflects an attitudebased equally on affect and cognition. Therefore, positive coefficients in theregression models indicate partisan attitudes relying more on cognition.In order to show the value of the measures above and beyond what the

Michigan measure provides, a folded Party Identification scale, based on thestandard Michigan question was also included. The remainder of the variablesincluded standard demographic controls of gender, age, education, and raceas well as controls for political knowledge and interest.A brief overview of Tables 1 and 2 indicates the utility of both these psycho-

logical measures. In 5 of the 6 models, the social identity scale has a statisti-cally significant impact on the dependent variable. Its effects are especiallystrong on candidate and party feeling thermometers and partisan activities.More importantly, social identity and folded PID are both measured on 0–3scales and in 5 of the 6 models, the size of the coefficient for social identityis considerably larger. The affect and cognition measure is not quite as benefi-cial—achieving conventional statistical significance in three of the models andmarginal significance in a 4th. Yet, this is likewise controlling for the impactof folded PID and the social identity measure. The R2 change in the twotables indicates the improvement in the R2 from adding the two psychologicalpartisan variables. Although the overall R2s in these models are generally lowerthan one would like, the change statistics in these regressions clearly demon-strate the added value of relying on the psychological measures beyond thetraditional Michigan PID scale. Perhaps more importantly, though, they suc-ceed in giving us greater insight into how various aspects of partisanship influ-ence other political beliefs and behaviors.

DISCUSSION

The preceding data analysis demonstrates that even at a basic level, usingpsychologically refined measures of partisanship can lead to greater explana-tory power in our models of political attitudes and behavior. Nonetheless,

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TABLE 1. Impact of Cognition/Affect and Partisan Social Identityon Political Attitudes

Party FT Candidate FT IssueDifferential Differential Extremity

Cognition/Affect .97 3.79* .28**(1.36) (1.69) (.06)

Social Identity 12.34** 16.27** .43*(4.23) (5.31) (.19)

Party Strength (folded 7-point scale) 10.34** −.78 .01(2.272) (3.41) (.12)

Interest 12.60 1.55 −.47(8.09) (10.13) (.37)

Knowledge −1.20 1.40 .17*(1.78) (2.26) (.08)

Education −6.53** −5.03* .07(1.82) (2.27) (.08)

Gender −8.55* −2.99 −.09(3.62) (4.51) (.16)

Constant 27.62* 25.161 3.47**(12.16) (15.05) (.55)

Number 217 216 219R2 Change .031 .058 .095R2 .254 .095 .138

Note: Cell entries are unstandardized OLS coefficients, standard errors are in parentheses.*p ≤ .05, **p < .01, two-tailed test.

there is always a cost to adding measures and to truly be worthwhile, theyshould be of theoretical and conceptual benefit beyond simply creating smallto moderate improvements in R2 statistics. When we return to some of thecentral debates over the nature of partisanship, it becomes apparent that thesemeasures offer substantial potential for insight into these arguments.One prominent example that shows the benefits of using more refined,

theoretically based measures, is the ongoing problem of intransitivities andhow to properly deal with independent leaners (Greene, 2000; Keith et al.,1992; Petrocik, 1974). The strong partisan behavior of so-called independentleaners provides apparent indication that indeed many persons have a stronglypositive attitude toward parties but lack a group identification as a Democrator Republican. Conversely, weak partisans are almost by definition personswho identify as member of a partisan group yet lack strong positive attitudestoward that party. Separate measures for attitudes toward parties and groupbelonging with parties would surely go a long way toward alleviating this prob-lem. Furthermore, it could provide guidance as to when and when not to treatleaners as partisans (Greene, 2000).


TABLE 2. Impact of Cognition/Affect and Partisan Social Identityon Political Behaviors

PartyStraight-Ticket Over-Time Activity

vote Party Support Index

Cognition/Affect −.24* −.03 .11+(.11) (.05) (.06)

Social Identity −.05 .34* .76**(.35) (.17) (.19)

Party Strength (folded 7-point scale) −.12 .16 −.11(.22) (.11) (.13)

Interest 1.05 .35 1.69**(.69) (.34) (.37)

Knowledge −.07 .07 .01(.15) (.07) (.08)

Education −.14 .03 −.02(.15) (.08) (.08)

Gender −.25 −.19 −.05(.30) (.15) (.16)

Constant .71 2.49** −.46(1.01) (.50) (.55)

Number 200 214 219R2 Change .032 .019 .062R2 .061 .093 .236

Notes: Cell entries are unstandardized OLS coefficients, standard errors are in parentheses.In the case of straight-ticket vote, R2 is pseudo R2 and cell entries are logit coefficients.+ p < .10, *p ≤ .05, **p < .01, two-tailed test.

Likewise, controversy over the stability of partisanship may exist due to thedifferent nature of party attitudes and party group attachments. It seems likelythat group identification provides a more stable component of partisanshipthan do party attitudes. It may be that how stable one determines partisanshipto be may partially depend on whether one is examining the attitudinal orgroup identity basis of partisanship. Further evidence on this debate wouldbe most compelling if based on appropriate measures. For example, if evenwhen using social identity measures over time partisanship was found to befairly unstable, that would go a long way toward settling the debate.Although the ongoing endogenous vs. exogenous debate is probably in some

ways methodologically intractable, there is nonetheless reason to believe thatcertain aspects of partisanship may be more endogenous, for example, cogni-tive aspects, whereas other aspects may tend to be exogenous, for example,group identification. Similarly, partisan affect is probably a more stable attitu-dinal component than partisan cognition. Though attitudes toward the parties

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may certainly shift over time, the fundamental emotional reaction should berelatively stable to the degree it is not sensitive to changing cognitive elementssuch as issues and candidates. Likewise, it seems reasonable to expect thatgroup identification is less susceptible to outside influences than are partisanattitudes.Studies of the intergenerational transmission of partisanship might likewise

benefit from use of these measures. For example, what exactly is being trans-mitted from parent to child? Is it the actual group identification, or ratherpositive affect, that is then conducive to group identification as the child ma-tures? Or is it the converse? Knowing answers to questions such as these maybetter help us to understand the internal family dynamics of partisanship andthe role it may play in partisan realignments.Although the applicability to voting models and the study of elections may

not be as readily apparent, there is surely theoretical and empirical benefit tobe had here as well. What aspect of partisanship is most influential in a votechoice—the affective, cognitive, or group identity? Can elements of the cam-paign context influence what psychological aspects of partisanship voters relyon in the voting booth? What, if anything, can political parties do to try andincrease partisan group identification and thereby electoral support? In short,the use of the types of measures advocated here should have value not just toscholars of political parties but to all those interested in the interaction ofpartisanship and the electoral context.

CONCLUSION

Although we often talk about a social-psychological model of voting basedon partisanship and frequently treat party identification according to social-psychological concepts of attitudes and group identification, it would seemthat our measurement and theory building of party identification have notbeen well informed by developments in social psychology. From nearly thebeginning of voting studies, we have considered party identification to be anattitude, yet used a measure more suited to assessing party identification asgroup belonging. Perhaps this is why the most commonly used alternativemeasures of partisanship appear to be more suited to measuring party identifi-cation as an attitude. Yet, for the most part, these alternative measures arenot well based on social-psychological theory and fall short in a number ofimportant respects. There have been efforts to create improved psychologicalmeasures of partisan attitudes, but so far these have been geographically lim-ited in scope and dedicated more to assessing separate affective and cognitivecomponents rather than creating an overall attitude measure.Certainly the Michigan measure is not going anywhere, nor should it, yet it

also seems clear that further understanding of partisanship requires that this


measure be supplemented with additional measures of partisanship. What iscalled for here is an expanded awareness of the theoretical limitations of theexisting measure as well as a willingness to explore more psychologically in-formed measures of partisanship in national surveys. The limited studies doneso far that have used more precise psychological measures of partisanship haveall met with success in expanding our knowledge of party affiliation and re-lated political behaviors. The next step should be to incorporate some of thesemeasures, or their variants, into major national surveys in order to settle moreconclusively many of the existing debates on partisanship as well as to betterunderstand the role of party affiliation in political behavior.

Acknowledgments. I would like to thank John Geer and the anonymous reviewersfor helpful comments.

APPENDIX A: PSYCHOLOGICALLY BASED MEASURES OF PARTISANAFFECT AND COGNITION

Greene (1999)

Semantic differential scales for Affect, Cognition, and Evaluation

Affective Scale Items Cognitive Scale Items Evaluation Scale ItemsDelighted Useful GoodAngry Unsafe DislikeHappy Valuable PositiveAnnoyed Unhealthy UndesirableJoy Beneficial LikeHateful Worthless BadRelaxed Wise DesirableDisgusted Harmful Negative

Affective Scale Instructions

Below is a list of feelings or moods that could be caused by an object. Please usethe list below to describe how the Democratic Party makes you feel. If the word defi-nitely describes how the Democratic Party makes you feel, then circle the number 7.If you decide that the word does not at all describe how the Democratic Party makesyou feel, then circle the number 1. Use the intermediate numbers between 1 and 7 toindicate responses between these two extremes.

Cognitive Scale Instructions

Below is a list of traits or characteristics that could be used to describe an object.Please use the list below to describe the Democratic Party. If the word definitelydescribes the Democratic Party, then circle the number 7. If you decide that the word

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does not at all describe the Democratic Party, then circle the number 1. Use theintermediate numbers between 1 and 7 to indicate responses between these two ex-tremes.

Evaluation Scale Instructions

Below is a list of words that could be used to describe your overall evaluation of anobject. Please use the list below to describe your evaluation of the Democratic Party.If the word definitely describes your evaluation of the Democratic Party, then circlethe number 7. If you decide that the word does not at all describe your evaluation ofthe Democratic Party, then circle the number 1. Use the intermediate numbers be-tween 1 and 7 to indicate responses between these two extremes.

Roscoe and Christiansen (2001)

Cognitive items:

I think the Republican party does a good job of creating prosperityI think the Republican party is effective at keeping us out of warI think the Republican party provides effective leadership in global affairsI think the Republican party provides effective leadership on problems within theUS

I think the Republican party reflects my own opinions on political issuesI think the Republican party will steer the country in the right directionI think the Republican party looks out for the interests of people like meI think the Republican party has smart leadersI think the Republican party has honest leadersI think the Republican party has been bad for the country (r)

Affective items:

The Republican party makes me feel angryThe Republican party makes me feel hopefulThe Republican party makes me feel proudThe Republican party makes me feel embarrassed (r)The Republican party makes me feel afraid (r)The Republican party makes me feel safeThe Republican party makes me feel happyThe Republican party makes me feel sad (r)The Republican party makes me feel nervous (r)The Republican party makes me feel calm

Response options for all items: agree, disagree, or neither


Weisberg and Hasecke (1999)

Affect items:Think about the Republican Party. Now has the Republican Party—because of the

kind of party it is, or because of something it has done—ever made you feel:Angry?Hopeful?Afraid?Proud?

Response options: Yes, have felt; No, have never felt

Cognitive items:Think about the Democratic Party. The first word on our list is “strong.” In your

opinion, does the word “strong” describe the Democratic Party extremely well, quitewell, not too well, or not well at all?Inspiring?Moral?Honest?Cares about people like you?

Response options: extremely well, quite well, not too well, not well at all

APPENDIX B: PSYCHOLOGICALLY BASED MEASURES OF PARTISANSOCIAL IDENTITY

Greene (1999) and Weisberg and Hasecke (1999); *indicatesitems used in Weisberg and Hasecke)

Identification with a Psychological Group (IDPG) scale

When someone criticizes this group, it feels like a personal insult*I don’t act like the typical person of this groupI’m very interested in what others think about this groupThe limitations associated with this group apply to me alsoWhen I talk about this group, I usually say “we” rather than “they”*I have a number of qualities typical of members of this groupThis group’s successes are my successes*If a story in the media criticized this group, I would feel embarrassedWhen someone praises this group, it feels like a personal compliment*I act like a person of this group to a great extent

Response options: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree

Kelly (1988)

It is important to me that I support this partyI identify with this party

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I feel strong ties with other people who support this party I am glad to support thisparty

I see myself as supporting this partyI make excuses for supporting this partyI try to hide supporting this partyI feel that it puts me at a disadvantage to support this party I feel annoyed to saythat that I support his party

I feel critical of this party

Response options: never, rarely, sometimes, often, very often

NOTE

1. Crites et al. (1994) found that their separate semantic differential scales consistently providedreliable and valid measures across a diverse array of objects, for example, church, Yale, snakes,pizza, capital punishment.

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The Social-Psychological Measurement of Partisanship