Elections Activate Partisanship across Countries
2019
It has long been argued that elections amplify partisan
predispositions. We take advantage of the timing of the
cross-national post-election surveys included in the Comparative
Study of Electoral Systems to explore the effects that elections
have on individuals’ attachments to political parties. Within these
surveys, under the assumption that the dates on which respondents
are interviewed are assigned independent of factors known to affect
partisanship, we are able to identify the causal effects of election
salience on partisan attachments. We find strong evidence that
election salience increases the probability of one having a party
attachment, increases the strength of attachments, and heightens the
relationship between partisanship and evaluations of political
actors. Empirical explorations of our identifying assumption bolster
its validity. Our results substantiate the causal role that
elections play in activating partisanship.
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