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Douglas Rose's avatar

Converse said he showed that voters didn't use ideology because they did not understand. Actually, speaking of innumeracy, he just pecentagized the table the wrong way, from effect to cause, showing only that voters who used ideology understood it. Duh. Voters preferred, instead, to rate candidates and parties in terms of 1) competence, 2) performance, and 3) group benefits. At the moment, I think, Democratic selectors should be busy concentrating on finding a candidate who qualifies on the first two of these. As Trump voters are finding, promising the moon doesn't do much good if you can't deliver.

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G. Elliott Morris's avatar

Interesting. I've never heard that criticism of Converse's work before (specifically of his 1964 paper).

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Douglas Rose's avatar

The Michigan folks used to stick together.

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Douglas Rose's avatar

If you take the published percentages and marginals, you can create the proper table, which indicates that most respondents who understand ideology do not use it. If fact, Converse's academic driven "hierarchy" of levels conceptualization stands voter preferences on their head, as I indicated in my comment. Of course, Converse uses perjorative terms ("no issue content," "nature of the times") but the actual comments focus on competence and performance.

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Adam Blum's avatar

As you alluded to people have different definitions of what moderate is. Liberal is still a bit of a bad word in America. If we want to know the ideology of Americans I think what Pew did is the better.

https://www.people-press.org/2017/10/24/political-typology-reveals-deep-fissures-on-the-right-and-left/

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G. Elliott Morris's avatar

Pew's "ideo-centrality" measure is a good alternative to self-identification.

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Adam Blum's avatar

Is that the same as what I posted? The typology?

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G. Elliott Morris's avatar

Yes!

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