Party Identification

Franz Urban Pappi

Parliamentary and presidential elections are regularly held every 3 to 5 years, and the behavior of the electorate is characterized by a certain inertia, sometimes more and sometimes less. This inertia at the aggregate level is the consequence of decisions of individual voters whose party attachments predispose them to elect candidates of the same party in a series of elections. Various terms are used as synonyms for this general idea of party attachment, such as partisanship, party closeness, party loyalty , and party identification . This type of enduring attachment has to be distinguished from short-term party evaluations or from current party preference as the immediate, direct cause of voting behavior. Whereas party attachment is usually measured as attachment to one particular party, current party preference is sometimes operationalized as a preference order for a set of parties, from one's most to least preferred party. As used in voting behavior ...

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