Most voters evaluate politics through group-interest loyalties rather than ideology

Evidence

In the third level were placed respondents who failed to rely upon any such overarching dimensions yet evaluated parties and candidates in terms of their expected favorable or unfavorable treatment of different social groupings in the population. The Democratic Party might be disliked because “it’s trying to help the Blacks too much,” or the Republican Party might be endorsed because farm prices would be better with the Republicans in office. The more sophisticated of these group-interest responses reflected an awareness of conflict in interest between “big business” or “rich people,” on the one hand, and “labor” or the “working man,” on the other, and parties and candidates were located accordingly. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1889

Categorization

• DEFINE: This defines the third ‘level of conceptualization’ — group-interest responsiveness as distinct from ideologue and near-ideologue strata.
• XREF: Connects to Philip Converse’s ‘belief systems in mass publics’ and later work on issue publics and low-information rationality (Lupia, Popkin). — connects to: Latent public opinion rarely diverges from expressed collective policy preferences — Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics:…, 22