How Educational Attainment Moderates the Recursive Relationship Between Policy Orientations and Partisanship

Abstract

Partisanship and policy attitudes are two foundational political dispositions. While scholars recognize both as important, there is a longstanding debate about how these dispositions influence each other. One camp argues that partisanship shapes policy attitudes much more strongly than the reverse, the other claims policy attitudes exert a powerful influence on partisanship. In this paper, I take up this debate and test these claims. I assess whether individuals bring their partisanship in line with their policy orientations with an analysis of 14 ANES and GSS panels. The highly educated have more stable attitudes and are more likely to bring their partisanship and policy attitudes in line with each other. The relationship is weaker among those with only a high school diploma. These results show that policy attitudes exert an underappreciated influence on partisanship. Overall, I find the policy orientations shape partisanship at least as much as the reverse.