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IDEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE IN THE 1996 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: COMMUNITY AND INDIVIDUAL COMPONENTS
Author(s) -
Scheb John M.,
Lyons William
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
southeastern political review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 0730-2177
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2000.tb00796.x
Subject(s) - ideology , presidential system , multidimensional scaling , politics , dimension (graph theory) , political science , space (punctuation) , sociology , social psychology , public relations , social science , law , psychology , statistics , computer science , mathematics , pure mathematics , operating system
Ideology has both individual and aggregate components—it exists in the minds of individuals as well as in a shared community dialogue. Individual Differences Scaling (INDSCAL) has been shown to be useful in studying ideological structure at both levels. However, few, if any, attempts have been made to employ INDSCAL in large‐scale survey research. In a national telephone survey during the 1996 presidential campaign, we used INDSCAL to ascertain the ideological structure of the American electorate and the individual variations around that structure. In the aggregate, we find that the national political community arrayed the candidates, parties and issues in the campaign in a reasonably predictable and rational manner. It is clear that one dimension, the traditional liberal‐conservative continuum, which more or less coincides with the political party spectrum, provides the common structure for political evaluation and communication. However, individuals vary widely in their ability to spatially array political objects in a manageable intellectual space and their participation in the dominant ideological paradigm. We find these variations to be related to strength of partisan attachment and level of education, respectively.