Party identification

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In electoral research, party identification describes a long-term, stable, affective bond with a political party. This bond is usually acquired in the early phase of political socialization and intensified in the course of life.

The more a voter identifies with a party, the greater the likelihood that they will vote for that party. Should he nevertheless opt for another party from time to time, it is likely that he will return to his party if there is strong identification.

Party identification has a positive effect on voter turnout, regardless of which party you feel you belong to.

In various models of empirical electoral research, especially in the Ann Arbor model outlined by Angus Campbell and his colleagues Philip E. Converse , Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes in their work The American Voter , party identification occupies an important position. In the 1970s, a question that is still used today and which tries to depict the concept of party identification prevailed in the Federal Republic of Germany: “Many people in the Federal Republic tend towards a certain party for a long time, even though they sometimes vote for another party . How is it with you? Generally speaking, do you tend towards a particular party? "

The strength of party identification is often shown on an ordinal scale of “very strong”, “strong”, “medium”, “fairly weak” and “very weak”.

In electoral research , dealignment describes the process of losing party identifications that can be determined across national borders.

The term party identity used by the Bertelsmann Foundation is more narrowly defined. For the foundation, eligible voters with a “positive party identity” are only those who state that they “would vote for a party 'in any case' and thus in every election, regardless of whether at European, state or local level”. The proportion of people with a “positive party identity” in this sense is only around 6 percent of the voters of the parties in the twelve largest countries of the European Union in 2019. "Negative party identities" are more pronounced, i. H. the wish that a certain party should not belong under any circumstances to the coming government. According to the Bertelsmann Foundation, 49 percent of those eligible to vote in the twelve EU countries have at least one “negative party identity”.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sabine Kinkartz: European elections: More than ten percent right-wing regular voters . dw.com . April 26, 2019, accessed May 6, 2019