Political Awareness and Partisan Realignment

• Published date: 01 December 2011
• Date: 01 December 2011
• Author: Ryan L. Claassen
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912910379228

Political Research Quarterly

64(4) 818 –830

© 2011 University of Utah

Reprints and permission:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1065912910379228

http://prq.sagepub.com

Political Awareness and Partisan

Realignment: Are the Unaware

Unevolved?

Ryan L. Claassen1

Abstract

Many attribute the demise of the solid South, and changes in party attachments outside the South, to elite-level changes

in the parties’ positions on racial issues and an issue evolution of the party system. Support is also growing for the

notion that, as the Republican Party became an acceptable alternative to the Democratic Party for racial issues in the

South, a resurgence of class-based partisanship further fueled the exodus. By investigating whether political awareness

mediates responsiveness to changes in the political environment, evidence that partisan evolution is concentrated

among more aware citizens is uncovered, and the implications are examined.

Keywords

partisan realignment, southern politics, political awareness, political information, race, class

Conceiving of political change through the lens of

Darwinian evolution, Carmines and Stimson (1989) dem-

onstrate a realignment of partisan loyalties around issues

of racial inequality. But there are at least two rival expla-

nations for the dramatic shift in American partisanship

over the past forty-plus years. The first suggests that par-

tisan change represents a realignment around economic

interests (for example, Shafer and Johnston 2001, 2006),

and the second posits that partisan change is actually the

result of identity- and group-based sorting (see Green,

Palmquist, and Schickler 2002). While each of these stud-

ies compellingly demonstrates that elite-level changes

on racial issues and economic issues played critical roles

explaining the changing party attachments of Americans

over the past forty-plus years, the possibility that indi-

viduals’ reactions to changes in the political environment

depend upon political awareness remains unexplored.1

The primary reason awareness-based differences in par-

tisan realignment remain unexplored relates to assumptions

made, either implicitly or explicitly, about similar parti-

san change among individuals regardless of awareness.

In the case of the evolution model, Carmines and Stimson

(1989) explicitly claim evolution weeds out complicated

issues and that matters of race fit an “easy” issue profile.

Less explicitly, Green, Palmquist, and Schickler (2002)

posit that socialization processes unfold naturally with

little or no demand for complicated, conscious thought,

let alone encyclopedic information about politics. Finally,

Shafer and Johnston (2001, 2006) use income as a proxy

for economic interests and implicitly assume that famil-

iarity with one’s own income overcomes informational

barriers to pursuing one’s material interests in the politi-

cal world.

But assumptions that political awareness does not mat-

ter in the context of partisan realignment are increasingly

at odds with a growing body of research that demonstrates

awareness-based heterogeneity in a variety of contexts

(Althaus 1996, 1998, 2003; Bartels 1994, 1996; Claassen

and Highton 2006; Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Gilens

2001; Zaller 1992). Thus, the realignment literature has not

yet considered the possibility of awareness effects, and

the awareness effects literature has yet to explore partisan

realignment. Consequently, this investigation provides a

new test of whether awareness mediates individuals’ abil-

ities to respond to a major political change and, in doing

so, contributes new knowledge about the nature of parti-

san change and the conditions in which political aware-

ness matters.

The possibility that awareness mediates partisan realign-

ment takes on additional substantive significance from the

dual facts that the shift involved changi ng partisansh ip and

1Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ryan L. Claassen, Department of Political Science, Kent State

University, P.O. Box 5190, Kent, Ohio 44242-0001, USA; phone: 330-

672-8942; fax: 330-672-3362

Email: rclaasse@kent.edu