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Political Behavior
Published in: Political Behavior 1/2015

01-03-2015 | Original Paper

The Role of Indifference in Split-Ticket Voting

Author: Nicholas T. Davis

Published in: Political Behavior | Issue 1/2015

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Abstract

Previous studies of split-ticket voting have demonstrated that partisan ambivalence—countervailing affective cross-pressure that decreases preference stability—is positively related to an individual’s likelihood of casting a split ballot. While these findings are intuitive, recent methodological work regarding the measurement of ambivalence hints that indifference—i.e. the complete absence of affective political attachments—should produce a stronger positive effect on split-ticket voting than ambivalence. If partisan considerations are not central to the self-image of indifferent voters—who have little cognitive or emotional attachments from which they draw politically-relevant information—then they should be very likely to cast split ballots given that their nominal partisan attachments are only tentatively related to electoral choice. Drawing upon this distinction, I disaggregate indifferent individuals (i.e. those voters who are neither positively nor negatively oriented towards the parties) from ambivalent ones (i.e. those voters who possess mixed or conflicting affective attachments to both parties) and demonstrate that indifference has a greater positive effect on an individual’s propensity to engage in split-ticketing. I then show how the prevailing interval-level operationalization of ambivalence underestimates the true effect of indifference on split-ticketing.
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Footnotes
1
One further alternative that bears mentioning is a kind of sincere ticket-splitting that occurs when perceptions of an opposite-party candidate’s ideology is similar to an in-party candidate’s (Frymer et al. 1996).
 
2
A further problem with weak partisanship theory is that those voters who identify as independent, yet who “lean” in one partisan direction or another actually behave significantly more partisan than they confess to interviewers (Petrocik 1974).
 
3
This definition has slightly changed in Lavine et al.’s (2012, p. 54) recent work on ambivalence, where ambivalence is defined as “a disjuncture between the identification and evaluative components of partisanship.” Conceptually, this places more emphasis on the role of identity, which has some empirical implications for conceptualizing “ambivalence” that are discussed later in the text.
 
4
It’s worth noting, however, that the decision to split one’s ticket need not be absolutely governed by complete disinterest, ignorance, or even a lack of identity. Recent research on the motivations of political independents suggests that these individuals may possess a conscious “independence” which functions, to them, as a brand of partisan identification (Klar 2013). Under these circumstances, then, a conscious split-ticket by an indifferent individual may be a purposeful attempt at fostering a certain detachment from the parties. Still, the portrait of indifference presented here is that indifferent individuals do seem truly less attached to politics generally.
 
5
As mentioned previously, a more recent operationalization of ambivalence by Lavine et al. (2012) recasts ambivalence explicitly in terms of identity-consistent and identity-conflicting evaluations. This departure from previous work computes ambivalence by considering different configurations of these two evaluations, which are treated as independent sets of affective appraisals insofar as they are entered as separate variables in models rather than combined within an index. Unfortunately, this measurement strategy purges those individuals who identify as independents from analysis because they do not have a partisan identity that would allow the construction of “conflicting” or “consistent” party evaluations. Because independents are an important population to consider (especially so in studies of split-ticketing), I rely on the prevailing comparative ambivalence index to construct the nominal categories of indifference and ambivalence.
 
6
To clarify, I use the term “comparative ambivalence” in the forthcoming analyses when I refer to the original interval-level ambivalence scale, which is the parlance originally used by Lavine (2001) to describe this measure. I believe this strategy helpfully differentiates between the measurement instrument and the actual affective state it purports to measure.
 
7
Moreover, the “additive” process of aggregating “likes” and “dislikes” within the two components of the comparative ambivalence equation may misrepresent how responses are weighted by the individual insofar as subsequent affective reactions after an initial response may be given differential consideration by the individual (Priester and Petty 1996). In this case, the strength—or extremity—of reported affect may not be systematic.
 
8
Unfortunately the results of the present analysis are constrained to this time period because, even though data from additional years (2008, 2012) is available, the party likes/dislikes necessary for the construction of ambivalence/indifference have not yet been formally released by the principle ANES investigation team.
 
9
Because a very few individuals may score as “indifferent” by virtue of the computation of their likes and dislikes, only individuals with non-response 0 s are counted as indifferent. Conversely, individuals who score 0 as a function of the combination of their likes and dislikes are counted as ambivalent.
 
10
The sample size of the populations for each of these models is slightly smaller than one might expect for two reasons related to data collection. First, the amount of individuals who are able to recall who they voted for as Representative varies over time. Second, the number of individuals responding to the likes/dislikes item used to construct the ambivalence/indifference measures varies as a function of the introduction of split-survey designs in later years, where the open-ended survey items used to construct the likes/dislikes are not asked of all respondents.
 
11
Unfortunately, a split-survey design in 1996 results in a particularly low sample size compared to other years which may be partially responsible for the observed insignificance of both ambivalence and indifference in the multivariate model; still, in bivariate tests we observe that indifference has a significant and slightly larger effect than ambivalence.
 
12
In the case of 2000, the negative and insignificant effect for indifference actually resembles what occurred in reality: 2000 was a historical low-point for indifferent individuals to cast split-tickets. In part this may be the result of a particularly polarizing election between Bush and Gore, where individuals were much more likely to profess having some affective attachments to one of the two parties.
 
13
That we do not observe these trends raises some questions about the effect of ambivalence on split-ticket voting. Most obviously, what are we to make of highly-ambivalent individuals? Although I have demonstrated that indifference plays a stronger role in inducing split-tickets, the argument could be made that by aggregating together all voters who express varying degrees of ambivalence, we have simply constrained the true variable effect that high levels of ambivalence should have on an individual’s likelihood of casting a split ballot. In other words, we might ask, “Do “higher” ambivalence scores actually yield more split-ticket voting?” The short answer is a qualified no. Of the two individuals in the entire sample of six elections who score the maximum value on comparative ambivalence, neither splits their ticket. Moreover, the likelihood of splitting an individual’s ticket crests around scores of 2 and fall precipitously as scores increase (note that 90 % of all scores are less than 2). This effectively demonstrates prior research’s concern about the propriety of considering ambivalence’s effect on political behavior to be interval in nature (Thornton 2011), rendering it difficult to make the case that by considering ambivalence as a nominal state we have inappropriately constrained its effects.
 
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Metadata
Title
The Role of Indifference in Split-Ticket Voting
Author
Nicholas T. Davis
Publication date
01-03-2015
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Political Behavior / Issue 1/2015
Print ISSN: 0190-9320
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6687
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-013-9266-9

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