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The Mobilizing Effect of Parties' Moral Rhetoric
Author(s) -
Jung JaeHee
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
american journal of political science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.347
H-Index - 170
eISSN - 1540-5907
pISSN - 0092-5853
DOI - 10.1111/ajps.12476
Subject(s) - rhetoric , argument (complex analysis) , political science , politics , social psychology , preference , mechanism (biology) , affect (linguistics) , survey data collection , positive economics , sociology , psychology , law , epistemology , economics , philosophy , biochemistry , linguistics , chemistry , statistics , mathematics , communication , microeconomics
Abstract How does parties' use of moral rhetoric affect voter behavior? Prior comparative party research has studied party positions without much attention to how parties explain and justify their positions. Drawing insights from political and moral psychology, I argue that moral rhetoric mobilizes copartisan voters by activating positive emotions about their partisan preference. I expect this to hold among copartisans who are exposed to party rhetoric. To test my argument, I measure moral rhetoric by text‐analyzing party manifestos from six English‐speaking democracies and measure mobilization using copartisan turnout in survey data. The results support my argument. Furthermore, I find evidence in support of the theoretical mechanism using survey experiments and panel survey data from Britain. The article shows that moral rhetoric is a party campaign frame that has important consequences for voter behavior.