Linking Party Platforms to Perceptions of Presidential Candidates’ Policy Positions, 1972–2000

• Date: 01 December 2011
• Author: Elizabeth N. Simas,Kevin A. Evans
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912910379226
• Published date: 01 December 2011

Political Research Quarterly

64(4) 831 –839

© 2011 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912910379226

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Linking Party Platforms to Perceptions

of Presidential Candidates’ Policy

Positions, 1972–2000

Elizabeth N. Simas1 and Kevin A. Evans1

Abstract

If candidates sometimes seek to distinguish themselves from their parties and are ambiguous about their policy

positions, to what extent do the policy platforms of parties affect individuals’ perceptions of presidential candidate

positions? Using data from the American National Election Study and the Comparative Manifesto Project from 1972

to 2000, we show that citizens are able to use party platforms in their assessments of presidential candidates. We also

demonstrate that an individual’s level of education is important in the process of linking Republican Party platforms

to Republican presidential candidates. Our findings have important implications for the role of parties in presidential

elections.

Keywords

party platforms, candidate positioning, voter perceptions, elections

According to the proximity model of voting proposed by

Downs (1957), voters choose the candidate who locates

closest to them in an ideological space. If this model is to

accurately capture voting behavior in modern American

elections, one major assumption must be true: voters must

be able to identify the ideological positions of candi-

dates. Given the generally low levels of knowledge among

American citizens (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996), this

assumption appears to be problematic for Downsian the-

ory. Further compounding the problem is the fact that

many scholars, including Downs himself, have shown that

it is actually in a candidate’s best interest not to make his

or her policy positions clearly identifiable to the public

(Downs 1957; Shepsle 1972; Page 1976, 1978). Thus, if

candidates sometimes seek to distinguish themselves from

their parties and do their best to conceal issue positions,

and voters have little interest or motivation to actively

seek those positions out (Graber 1984; Keeter and Zuckin

1983), to what extent do the policy platforms of parties

affect individuals’ perceptions of presidential candidate

positions?

Although partisanship is the major predictor of vote

choice in American elections (Campbell et al. 1960; Bartels

2000), the strong influence of parties’ election manifestos

that has been found in other democracies (Meguid 2005;

Tavits 2007; van der Brug 1999) is absent in the study of

American presidential politics. As such, this article aims

to explicitly demonstrate that a link between perceptions

of presidential candidates and party platforms exists in

the United States. In doing so, we build upon the previous

literature (i.e., Koch 2002; Franklin 1991) by (1) going

beyond the House and Senate to find a connection between

parties and candidates at the presidential level and (2) dem-

onstrating that the actual positions of parties, not only

peoples’ subjective perceptions of them, influence impres-

sion formation.1

Using the logit-scale corrected Comparative Mani-

festo Project (CMP) codings of the Democratic and

Republican Party platforms (Lowe et al. 2009)2 as

unbiased measures of party positions, we analyze how

party positions affect citizen placements of presidential

candidates from 1972 to 2000. The results show that

voters do have a factual basis for their perceptions of

the ideological positioning of presidential candidates.

We also find that education plays an important role in

the process of linking Republican candidates and

Republican Party platforms. Overall, our research sug-

gests that the Downsian assumption that voters can

1University of California, Davis, USA

Corresponding Author:

Elizabeth N. Simas, UC Davis Department of Political Science,

1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA

Email: ensimas@ucdavis.edu