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THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGICAL SELF‐IDENTIFICATION IN THE 1988 AND 1992 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
Author(s) -
Scheb John M.,
Lyons William
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
southeastern political review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 0730-2177
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.1994.tb00326.x
Subject(s) - ideology , voting , political science , contest , presidential election , presidential system , political economy , voting behavior , identification (biology) , public administration , sociology , law , politics , botany , biology
There is a reasonable degree of scholarly consensus that ideology, at least defined as self‐placement on the liberal‐conservative continuum, plays a significant role in mass voting behavior. By most accounts, ideological identification played a major role in the 1988 presidential election. In that contest, the Bush campaign successfully employed a strategy of defining Dukakis as a ‘liberal.’ However, the ‘L word’ was less prominent in the 1992 campaign. Does that mean that ideological self‐identification was less of a factor in determining peoples' voting behavior in 1992? Using our own survey data, as well as the 1988 National Election Study, we find that ideology had approximately the same impact in 1992 as it had in 1988. However, there is evidence that the American voting public moved slightly toward the liberal end of the ideological spectrum. Despite a very different electoral outcome, the patterns underlying the vote in the 1988 and 1992 elections are remarkably similar.