Ideological Realignment and Active Partisans in the American Electorate

Abstract

This article investigates the consequences of ideological realignment for the motivations and policy preferences of active partisans—Democratic and Republican identifiers who engage in electoral activities that go beyond the act of voting. We hypothesize that, consistent with the logic of persuasion and selective recruitment/derecruitment, the influence of ideology as a motivation for campaign participation varies over time and between parties depending on the salience of the ideological cues provided by a party’s candidates and office-holders. Evidence from the 1972 to 2000 American National Election Studies supports this hypothesis. As a result of an ideological realignment led by conservative Republican leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, by the mid-1990s, ideology had become a much more important motivation for participation among Republicans than among Democrats, and active Republicans were farther to the right of the electorate than active Democrats were to the left of the electorate on a wide range of policy issues.