Democrats vary more than Republicans in ideological self-placement due to weaker symbolic anchors

Evidence

Consequently, with no direct symbolic link between evaluations of Democrats and evaluations of either liberals or conservatives, one might expect greater variation in the ideological identifications of Democrats. In fact, this is precisely what Levitin and Miller (1979) found: “Republicans were more homogeneous than Democrats in their ideological self-placement, and they were also much more often unqualified in their ideological commitments” (p. 757). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2084

Categorization

• XREF: This resonates with the asymmetry puzzle in political psychology—conservatives’ tighter ideological packaging versus liberal heterogeneity, echoing recent work on ideological coherence and motivated reasoning.