POLS 1140

Democracy for Realists:
Social Groups and Identities

Updated Mar 19, 2026

Wednesday

Plan

• Current Events/Piloting Survey

• Retrospective/Economic Voting

• A realist theory of democracy (Chapter 8)

• Evidence of the political Relevance of Group Identity (Chapter 9)

• Thursday: Pitfalls of group identity

Group Project

Attendance Survey

Please click here to register your attendance today.

What’s in a name?

Public opinion and Iran

• Discuss
• Questions
• CNN
• Reuters
• WaPo

• What are some questions/expectations we might ask?

• What does a model like RAS lead us to expect?

• What might Achen & Bartels expect?

• How does the public feel about the current conflict?

• How will attitudes change?

• Will we see a rally around the flag effect?

• What are the consequences for Trump’s Approval/Midterm elections?

Retrospective Voting

Overview

• Retrospective voting reflects an alternative response to problems raised by Converse (1964)

• Redefine the problem of citizen competence

  • Democracy doesn’t need perfectly informed, ideal citizens
  • Just requires citizens to select competent leaders and sanction bad leaders

Two Models of Retrospective Voting

• Leadership selection:
  • Select the most competent candidate
• Sanctioning
  • Punish “bad” candidates who fail to work on citizens behalf

Both models depend on the quality of the information or signal citizens have

Leadership Selection

As the information environment becomes noisier, it becomes harder to select good leaders

Leadership Sanctioning

As the information environment becomes noisier, it becomes

• Harder for voters to sanction ineffective leaders

• Easier for leaders to shirk their duties

Retrospective Voting

So what should people base their retrospective evaluations on?

In order to ascertain whether the incumbents have performed poorly or well, citizens need only calculate the changes in their own welfare. (Fiorina 1981)

Economic Voting

Economic Voting (Fiorina 1978)

Aggregate Evidence of Retrospective Voting

Debates in Economic Voting

Broad consensus that economic factors matter, but lots of ongoing debates within the field of economic voting:

• Macro vs Micro | Sociotropic vs Egocentric | National vs Pocketbook

  • Do national or individual economic factors matter?

• Time horizons | Myopic voters

  • Do voters maintain a “running tally” of long term events or are they overly swayed by recent changes

• Negative vs positive shocks

  • Negativity bias: weight bad news more heavily than good?

• Mechanisms and moderators

  • Partisans biases in evaluations of the economy

Achen and Bartel’s Critique of Retrospective Voting

A&B’s critique boils down to two claims:

1. Voters retrospective capabilities appear haphazard at best
   • Punish politicians for things that are out of their control (Blind Retrospectiion)
   • Ignoring policy failures they could address (e.g. Spanish Influenza)
2. Voter’s Economic evaluations are:
   • Short sighted
   • Poor predicters of competence
   • Open to Manipulation

Blind Retrospection

Review

Take a moment to review the arguments in Chapter 5. Specifically:

• Table 5.1 and Figure 5.1 and 5.3

• Table 5.2 and Figure 5.4

Shark Attacks and Blind Retrospection

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Shark Attacks and Blind Retrospection

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Shark Attacks and Blind Retrospection

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Droughts and Blind Retrospection

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Droughts and Blind Retrospection

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Summary

In Chapter 5, Achen and Bartels present evidence that voters enage in blind retrospection, punishing elected officials for events outside of their control.

• They show that Woodrow Wilson’s vote totals in 1916 appear to be lower in beach counties during a summer when shark attacks in New Jersey were particularly salient

• They suggest this phenomena is more general, by showing how extreme weather (droughts and floods) negatively impacts incumbent vote share.

But how robust are these results?

Do Shark Attacks Really Sway Elections

Do Shark Attacks Really Sway Elections

Did Shark Attacks Influence the 1912 Election

The Garden of Forking Paths

Summary

• The shark attack example is flashy and surprising

• Fowler and Hall (2018) offer compelling critiques of this particular finding

  • Achen and Bartels (2018) response

• But still others find evidence of irrelevant events influencing electoral behavior:

  • Healy et al. 2010 analyze football games ( Fowler and Montange offer a similar critique)
  • Busby and Druckman (2017) offer experimental evidence using Ohio State - Oregon game

• What can we conclude?

Economic Voting

Achen and Bartel’s Critique of Economic Voting

If voters are rational retrospective evaluators, we should observe:

• Long time horizons (running tally)

• Effects tied to actual executive responsibility (No shark attacks/droughts)

• Strong relationship between performance and re-election

If A&B are right, we should observe:

• Myopia (only recent quarters matter)

• Weak relationship between performance and competence

• Effects consistent with manipulation

Now let’s walk through some of the evidence.

Table 6.1: Voters are Short sighted and influenced only by recent economic events

What Is Being Estimated?

• Dependent variable: Incumbent vote share

• Key predictors: Quarterly economic growth

• Question: Do voters respond to the full term… or just the last year?

• If voters use a “running tally”:

  • growth over entire term should matter

• If voters are myopic: only the final year (or final quarters) should matter

Table 6.1: Voters are Short sighted and influenced only by recent economic events

## Interpretation

• Which quarters have statistically significant effects?

• How large are the effects?

• Do early-term economic shocks matter?

Key takeaway:

Only growth in the last year meaningfully predicts incumbent vote share.

• Voters appear to overweight recent economic conditions.

• That creates incentives for short-term manipulation.

What Would “Competence Selection” Look Like?

If voters select competent leaders:

Strong economic performance under Party A

• Party A should win repeatedly
• Future performance should be predictable

If voters do poorly at selection:

• Re-election does not strongly predict future performance
• Electoral outcomes may not track underlying competence

Table 6.4: Weak relationship between performance and competence

Table 6.5: Weak relationship between performance and competence

What Do These Results Suggest?

• Re-electing incumbents does not reliably improve economic outcomes (Table 6.4 & 6.5)

• Implication:

  • Even if voters respond to economic conditions, they may not be effectively selecting competent leaders.
  • Retrospection \(\neq\) competence selection.

What Would Manipulation Look Like?

If incumbents can stimulate the economy before elections we should observe:

• Economic growth spikes before elections

• Weak growth afterward

This creates:

• A moral hazard problem

• Incentives for short-term economic distortion

Figure 6.3: Voters May be Subject to Manipulation/Electoral Business Cycles

## Poltical Business Cycle:

• Economic growth appears to increase before elections.

• Suggests potential electoral timing.

• If voters focus heavily on recent growth, incumbents may game the system.

• Democratic accountability becomes vulnerable to short-term engineering.

Summary

• Theories of Retrospective Voting seek to offer an alternative account of democratic accountability that more realistically reflects the abilities of average citizens

• Rather than assuming coherent beliefs, complete knowledge, RV asks citizens to select good leaders and sanction bad leaders using assessments of their welfare as indicator of competence

• Critics of RV contend that retrospective evaluations are:

  • Haphazard: Citizens punish elected officials for things they have know control over
  • Myopic: Only recent economic evaluations seem to matter, can be manipulated/biased.

A Realist Theory of Democracy (Chapter 8)

Competing Theories of Democracy

Populist Folk Theory - Voters hold coherent policy preferences - Elections aggregate those preferences

Rational Retrospective Theory - Voters evaluate performance - Elections reward competence

How This Section Fits the Course

Achen & Bartels argue:

• Voters are not primarily policy maximizers
• Nor especially competent retrospective evaluators
• Instead, partisan loyalties flow from social identities

If that’s true, we should observe:

1. Voting shifts when group attachments shift
   
2. Party identification changing more slowly than votes
   
3. Attitudes following partisanship (or other core identities)

A brief introduction to Social Identities

• Social identities are going to play a significant role in A&B’s realist theory of democracy

• Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership

Social Identity

• Take a moment to write down all the social identities you possess.

My Social Identities

• White
• Male
• Sports fan (I agree, go Cavs)
• Catholic
• Democrat
• Married
• Irish and Italian
• Ithacan
• Academic
• Culture vulture

Social Identity

• Now cross off the least important identity.

• Now cross off the next least important identity…

Social Identity

• Social identities vary in
  • Origin (voluntary vs involuntary)
  • Strength
  • Salience
  • Effect
• People tend to
  • Possess multiple identities
  • Understand identities relationally (in-groups vs out groups)
  • Exaggerate differences between groups and emphasize similarities within groups

What Would Identity-Based Politics Look Like?

If identity drives politics, we should observe:

• Group loyalties preceding policy positions
• Party attachments shifting with group realignment
• Stable social identities predicting partisan change
• Attitudes adjusting to match partisan identity

It feels like we’re thinking (Chapter 9)

Evidence of Group Identity (Chapter 9)

Chapter 9 presents evidence of the important of “identities” to understanding political behavior using three types of evidence:

• Historical analysis of Catholic voting behavior

• Time series cross sectional survey analysis of the partisan identity and policy beliefs of White Southerners

• Panel survey analysis of abortion attitudes and partisanship

Catholic Voting: What Should We See?

If policy preferences dominate:

• Kennedy’s Catholic identity should not matter much.

If identity matters:

• Catholic voters should temporarily rally behind Kennedy.
• But long-term voting patterns should revert once the identity shock fades.

Figure 9.1

Historical analysis of Catholic voting behavior

• What are the key takeaways from Figure 9.1?
• What evidence supports the claims:
  • “[T]he impact of Kennedy’s candidacy on Catholic support for the Democratic Party was temporary” (p. 245)
  • “It is hard to imagine a clear demonstration of the political impact of group attachments and the trade offs among them” (p. 244)
• Why was “the social significance of a Catholic presidential candidacy … no longer sufficient to produce substantial deviations from accustomed voting behavior” (p. 246)

The Realignment of Partisan Identities in the South

Achen and Bartels present an alternative interpretation of realignment in the south emphasizing the role of social identities over standard accounts that emphasized partisan policies using the following evidence:

• Analyzing trends in PID and Voting overtime (Fig 9.1) and by age cohort (Fig 9.2)

• Analyzing trends in PID by policy position (Fig 9.4, 9.5)

• Regression analysis predicting PID with feelings toward Southerners over time (Table 9.1)

Southern Realignment: Competing Explanations

Standard Account: - Policy evolution (especially race) drove partisan change.

Achen & Bartels’ Claim: - Social identity as “Southerner” reshaped partisan attachments. - Voting moved first. - Party identification adjusted more slowly.

The Realignment of Partisan Identities in the South

Achen and Bartels present an alternative interpretation of realignment in the south emphasizing the role of social identities over standard accounts that emphasized partisan policies using the following evidence:

• Analyzing trends in PID and Voting overtime (Fig 9.1) and by age cohort (Fig 9.2)

• Analyzing trends in PID by policy position (Fig 9.4, 9.5)

• Regression analysis predicting PID with feelings toward Southerners over time (Table 9.1)

White Southerners went from solid Democrats to consistent Republicans

• Fig 9.2
• Summary

• Voting shifts faster than partisan identification.
• PID lags behind electoral behavior.

Implication:

• Identity-based attachments adjust slowly.
• Elections move before self-identification catches up.

If Issue Evolution Drove Realignment…

We would expect:

• Strong and consistent relationships between racial policy views and PID
• Clear sorting by policy position
• Identity feelings to be secondary

Issue evolution alone doesn’t explain partisan realignment

What would issue evolution predict?

Regression Analysis

What Is Being Estimated?

Dependent variable: - Democratic identification among White Southerners

Key predictor: - Feelings toward “Southerners”

Question: Does warmth toward the in-group predict partisanship?

Regression Analysis

Regression Analysis

The results indicate that the Democratic partisan advantage in 1964 among white southerners who expressed neutral attitudes toward “southerners” was almost 25 percentage points, while the corresponding advantage among those who expressed very warm feelings toward “southerners” was more than twice as large, almost 55 percentage points

What are these models showing

Regression Analysis

Was southern identity really the basis of these very different responses to the political events of the long southern realignment era?

Southern Identity and Partisan Identification

• Overview
• FT: Southerners
• Whites
• Blacks
• Govt Aid to Blacks

I find the model(s) in Table 9.1 a little confusing.

In the following tabs, I’ve plot some linear trends in Democratic Identification by year for:

• Feelings toward Southerners
• Feelings toward Whites
• Feelings toward Blacks
• Govt aid to Blacks

Do the Raw Patterns Match A&B Regression Story?

• In 1964, there is little clear relationship between affect toward white Southerners and Democratic ID.
• The slope varies substantially across years.
• Some relationships are weak, noisy, or unstable.
• Policy attitudes (e.g., aid to Blacks) sometimes show similar patterns.

This suggests that:

The regression interpretation requires modeling assumptions and selective emphasis.

The identity story is plausible – but it is not obvious in the raw data.

PID, Gender and Abortion

Two possibilities:

1. Attitudes -> Party (policy drives identity)
2. Party -> Attitudes (identity reshapes policy views)

Panel data allow us to test these claims (and test them separately for men and women)

When Party and Abortion Conflict: What Moves?

Two conditioning exercises:

1. Among 1982 Republicans: Does abortion position predict party defection?

2. Among 1982 pro-life citizens: Does party predict abortion conversion?

PID, Gender and Abortion

PID, Gender and Abortion

PID, Gender and Abortion

Key result:

• Women \(\to\) more likely to change party
  
• Men \(\to\) more likely to change abortion attitudes

Interpretation:

The identity that is more central (gender for women, party for men) is less likely to move.

Pitfalls of Group Identity (Chapter 10)

Pitfalls of Group Identity (Chapter 10)

Achen and Bartels conclude by considering the role of partisan identities in politics, and look at:

• Partisan misperceptions of party positions
• Partisan misperceptions of objective facts
• The impact of scandals on unrelated partisan policies

What Would Identity-Based Perception Look Like?

If identity shapes cognition:

• People should perceive their party as closer to their own views.
• Even when objective distances are equal.

People percieve parties as closer to the their own positions

Interpretation

• Partisans compress distance between themselves and their party.

• They exaggerate distance from the opposing party.

• Identity influences perception — not just preference.

If Identity Shapes Belief Formation…

We should observe:

• Partisan bias in factual beliefs
• Persistence of misperceptions even among the politically informed

Partisanship increases misperceptions of objective facts

Misperceptions remain common among even as political information increases

Interpretation

• Partisanship predicts factual misperceptions.

• Information does not eliminate identity-based distortions.

• Implication:

  • Democratic reasoning is filtered through group attachment.

What Would Identity-Driven Reactions to Scandals Look Like?

If partisanship structures evaluation:

• Scandals should spill over to unrelated policy attitudes.
• In-group members defend; out-group members generalize negativity.

The impact of scandals on unrelated partisan policies

The impact of scandals on unrelated partisan policies

Interpretation

• Scandal effects extend beyond the scandal domain.

• Partisan identity structures policy reactions.

• Identity organizes political reasoning broadly.

What Have We Learned?

Across cases:

• Catholic voting
• Southern realignment
• Abortion attitudes
• Perceptual biases
• Scandal spillovers

The pattern is consistent:

Social identity shapes:

• Voting
• Issue attitudes
• Perceptions
• Interpretation of events

Is this a problem for democracy?

Next week: Huddy’s Critique of Achen and Bartels

Huddy offers several critiques of Democracy for Realists:

• A&B’s discussion of partisanship and abortion
• The nature of group politics
• The relevance and rationality of group interests
• The consequences of multiple identities of varying strengths

Why does she make these critiques? How compelling are they?

Let’s pick these questions up at the start of class on Tuesday