Voter policy positions are barely more stable than pure chance

Evidence

A longitudinal study of the American electorate over a four-year period has permitted us to ask the same questions of the same people a number of times, usually separated by close to two-year intervals. Analysis of the stability of responses to the “basic” policy questions of the type presented in Table 10.2 yields remarkable results. Faced with the typical item of this kind, only about thirteen people out of twenty manage to locate themselves even on the same side of the controversy in successive interrogations, when ten out of twenty could have done so by chance alone. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1934

Categorization

• SHARE: Send to anyone who does empirical political science or survey methodology — the 13/20 vs 10/20 by chance alone result is a strikingly concrete number.
• QUESTION: Which Table 10.2 items were ‘basic’ and how stable were the more salient ones? Worth chasing the original study details.
• XREF: connects to: Ballot-box accountability fails for decisions of great complexity and detail — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 4263