Party Attachments and State Election Laws

Abstract

This article examines the influence that state party registration laws have on individual-level party attachments. It tests the hypothesis that individuals living in states with party registration laws are more likely than those living in states without such laws to identify themselves as partisans. This occurs primarily because of self-perception processes by which registrants infer their party attitudes from their own behaviors. Using the state-based Senate Election Study data to test this expectation, we find strong evidence for both statistically and substantively significant effects of party registration on individual partisanship. Registered indviduals living in states with party registration are, by about ten percenage points, more likely to identify as partisans than those in other states even when controlling for alternative hypotheses dealing with state cuture, attitudes toward the parties, retrospective evaluations, interest in politics, and demographic factors. Importantly, the effect is not observed for individuals who are not registered to vote but is for registered novoters. However, registration-induced party identification is shallow, as individuals living in registration states are also more likely to vote for candidates from the other party.