Election night losers
November 6, 2013 4 Comments
Chris Cilizza put together a list of winners and losers from yesterday’s election. Reasonable enough to me. Two “losers” though, I wanted to highlight:
* Independents: Guess what? Independents may not be the be-all, end-all of elections these days. Consider that Cuccinelli won independents by nine points while Mitt Romney won them by 11 in Virginia and by five nationwide. Both candidates lost. What’s the conclusion? That many independents may well be Republicans-in-hiding rather than true fence-sitters. Judging by Tuesday night’s results, moderates are the key swing group, not independents.
As long as we treat “Independents” as if it is some c0herent meaningful category, we’ll get stuff like this. “Independents” is a highly heterogeneous mix of attitudinal Democrats who prefer to call themselves Independent, attitudinal Republicans who prefer to call themselves Independent, and largely disengaged voters who have little affiliation for either party. Clearly, the ratio of this groups within “independent” can vary significantly in any particular election. It’s not like we don’t have ways to measure partisanship among independents and journalists should stop pretending we don’t. Save conclusion: the “independents” on election night in Virginia contained more Republican leaners than Democratic leaners.
* White voters: The erosion of the white vote continues. In 2009, white voters made up 78 percent of the Virginia electorate. On Tuesday it was 72 percent. This not only mirrors a national trend of a shrinking white vote but also speaks to Republicans’ broader need to expand their traditional electoral coalition or run the risk of not being able to build a majority across the country.
Yep. As for “run the risk” at this point I’d say Republican need to prove otherwise in our ever less white electorate.
About Steve Greene
Fully Myelinated 
I appreciate your addressing who “independents” are: a mix of attitudinal Republicans, attitudinal Democrats, and disengaged voters. I do, however, believe that the category is coherent in that all have no affinity for the two major political parties. They do share a characteristic: they do not have a psychological attachment to either political party. The problem is that the media and, I would argue, many citizens assume that independents share a moderate political ideology. They don’t, and every political scientist knows that. However, not all Democrats share a political ideology either. Nor do all Republicans share a political ideology, though they are more homogeneous ideologically than Democrats. Political scientists should inform the media and public what it means to be an independent and not perpetuate the myth that they’re closet partisans simply because they vote mostly for one of the two major party’s candidates, if they vote at all. They surely don’t expend any effort in performing partisan activities. In fact, they would probably prefer politics without political parties, although I’m not sure of that.
That’s not really true about leaners. While “closet partisans” is not a perfect metaphor, I think it is actually a reasonable approximation. I know a lot on this issue: http://apr.sagepub.com/content/28/4/511.short
Abstract:
In the traditional 7-point scale of partisanship, individuals classified as partisan leaners present a unique anomaly. These individuals self-classify themselves as politically independent, yet admit to preferring one political party over the other when probed. Previous research has shown that these partisan leaners are not demonstrably different from avowed partisans in either the attitudinal or behavioral support for their preferred party. Why these individuals should be partisan in attitudes and behaviors yet still consider themselves independents has not been adequately examined and raises important questions about our current understanding of partisanship. Using a unique psychological survey of voting-age adults, I find that leaners are different from true partisans in four areas: relatively less emphasis on affect and more emphasis on cognition in partisan attitudes; less partisan social identity, but heightened independent social identity; different paterns of parental socialization; and more negative attitudes toward parties in general.
My first reaction was: “Which of my statements is not really true about leaners?” I know that you have written about leaners, and we’ve had an exchange on your blog before about this issue. At that time, you stated that although they were differences between leaners and partisans, it is easier to characterize them as “closet partisans” than to explain the differences. However, I believe that simple and easy is not always accurate, and, in fact, the nuances are important. There are several recent papers, articles, and books that challenge the “closet partisans” characterization: Abrams and Fiorina, “Are Leaning Independents Deluded or Dishonest Weak Partisans?”; Eberly, “Family Feud: Democratic Activists v. Democratic Voters”; Diggles and Erickson, “Leaners Don’t Fall: The Myth of the Myth of the Independent Voter”; Norpoth and Velez, “Independent Leaners: Ideals, Myths, and Reality,” and Hajnal and Lee, Why Americans Don’t Join the Party: Race, Immigration, and the Failure (of Political Parties) to Engage the Electorate. For example, Norpoth and Velez state: “We take this to mean that Leaners are not dyed-in-the-wool partisans. Their connection to a party is not an instinctive identity, but rather a calculation of costs and benefits, including policy issues. . . . As a result, one needs to be cautious to read too much into reports that Leaners may vote for the presidential ticket as heavily as do Partisans, perhaps even surpassing weak Partisans in voting loyalty (Keith et al. 1992, Petrocik 2009). Leaners may simply align their partisanship with their vote or with considerations affecting both.” Hajnal and Lee complicate the matter further by noting that nonpartisans’ behavior is affected by the context of the election as well as by the race or ethnicity of the nonpartisan. They note that when leaners, for example, are given a viable option to the two major parties’ candidates in an election, they are likely to take that option and not vote for the candidate of the party toward which they lean. Statements from Hajnal and Lee, such as, “Leaners are not only quite likely to switch their partisanship over time, they are also considerably more likely than weak partisans to do so” and “Judged by a single vote at one point in time, leaners are as partisan or even more partisan than weak partisans. But judged by a single vote in the future, leaners are much less partisan than many have claimed” all substantiate my view that leaners are not really partisans and characterizing them as partisans is inaccurate.
I’m going to continue to disagree. In the end, this is all interpretation, and you and I are not going to come to a consensus on it. As a matter for political science, sure all this nuance has some value. As for value on how journalists report on the nature of elections, I still think it makes far more sense for journalists to consider leaners as partisans than to talk about “Independent voters” as a meaningful category.