Perceptions of Party Positions

These findings seem to tell a consistent story. Although not helpful about Pure Independents or Republican leaners, there are consistent hints about Democratic leaners: Being young and educated, neither memory, sentiment, nor self-interest made them receptive to the party-of-the-underdog image of the Democrats' New Deal–Fair Deal–Great Society tradition. They were interested in the problems of the late 1960s and early 1970s, not the 1930s. This might suggest that many call themselves Independents out of disappointment at the failure of either party's leaders to recognize their concerns and propose credible solutions.^[19]

[19] This picture of a sluggish Democratic leadership failing to respond to "new issues" hardly fits the situation in 1972 when George McGovern and the national convention delegates who nominated him were so preoccupied with new issues as to be out of touch with most Democrats. See Jeane Kirkpatrick, The New Presidential Elite (New York: Russell Sage Foundation and The Twentieth Century Fund, 1976), chap. 10. It is possible, of course, that the 1972-style incongruity contributed to the growth of a deviant breed of Democratic leaner who scorned radical chic and longed for the good old days of New Deal politics. The problem with this style of analysis is that one can always find examples of such incongruity, and thus any hypothesis about an unresponsive party would receive some support.

Many of the seven-point questions used by the NES to measure respondents' attitudes on issues also ask them to "place" each of the parties on that issue. We can use these placements to see to what extent respondents consider themselves in agreement with their party's position on most of the issues covered in tables 7.8 and 7.9. That Independent Democrats are more liberal than other Democrats on some issues and more conservative on others helps explain their avoidance of explicit identification with the party only if they think that the party is out of step. If they see themselves in agreement with their party—or no less so than outright partisans—it would not matter that they are more liberal or conservative since these issues could not be the cause of their independence.

Table 7.10 summarizes the gaps between our respondents' positions on various issues and the position on each issue they attribute to the Democratic party in 1972. Differences are measured along the familiar seven-point scale. A positive number indicates that the mean attitude of respondents in that category is more liberal than their impressions of where the Democratic party stands on the issue; that is, they see the party to their right. A minus sign in table 7.10 indicates that the position people in that category attribute to the Democratic party is to the left of their own position on that issue.

On the first three issues in table 7.10—regulating industrial pollution, fighting inflation, and government health insurance—Democratic leaners saw their party well to the right of where they stood. On the first two of these issues, however, the leaners' image of the party's position was the same as that of Strong and Weak Democrats. They considered the party slightly more conservative on women's equality and urban unrest. But on the other issues, including those where they were more liberal than other Democrats, Independent Democrats either felt that their party was just about where they were or that the party was more liberal than they. This is true of life-style issues, as well as racial issues like busing and unrest. These findings dampen the impulse to say that people became Independent Democrats because they were too liberal

to fit in the Democratic party's mainstream; on most issues in 1972, Democratic leaners did not see themselves as more liberal than the party. In fact, in all years, they placed themselves closer to where they saw the party than did either Weak or Strong Democrats.^[20]

The story is much the same for Independent Republicans. Perceptions in 1972 of the Republican party's positions on various issues are summarized in table 7.11. Only on pollution and inflation policy did Republican leaners consider themselves significantly more liberal than the Republican party and on the latter issue their image of the party was shared by outright Republican identifiers. On five other issues in table 7.11, Independent Republicans were closer to where they saw their party than were other Republicans.^[21]

Neither table 7.10 nor table 7.11 sheds much light on Pure Independents, whose impressions of the parties' stands on the issues were generally midway between those of the partisans.

We have narrowed our search for the causes of dealignment to those issues where there are substantial gaps between leaners' beliefs and those they attribute to the parties. Could these issues—pollution and health insurance—be the focus of leaners' dissatisfaction with the two parties? Have we found the causes of the parties' decline? Can we conclude that those issues on which leaners consider themselves at odds with their party are partly responsible for dealignment?

People whose party identification is affected by their beliefs about an issue should consider that issue important. At this point, the line of analysis we have been pursuing peters out: People who are particularly interested in any of the areas where leaners are at odds with their party have no distinctive

[20] In 1988 the differences were not very great between Independent Democrats and other Democrats in the extent to which they saw themselves as more liberal or more conservative than the Democratic party. The differences were largest on the issues of cooperation with the Soviet Union and women's rights.

[21] In 1988 Independent Republicans and Weak Republicans were strikingly similar in their positioning of themselves and their party, usually within one point on the seven-point scale.

preference for any level of partisanship. Indeed, we can be more categorical: Analysis of respondents' ideas about "the most important problem the country faces" reveals no tendency for people most concerned with any category of problem to be leaners, avowed partisans, or Pure Independents.

A second finding deals another blow to the issue-disparity argument. Tables 7.10 and 7.11 show that very often it was strong or weak partisans who were most out of step with their party. They, not leaners, often had more reason to be upset. On many issues, leaners were closer than outright partisans to where they saw their party standing.

We saw earlier that self-identified liberals' and conservatives' views of the ideological place of the two parties provided only very limited help in explaining dealignment. When we examine the ideological images of the two parties held by all respondents, we find, as was the case with issues, that leaners are at least as likely as outright partisans to see their party in step with them ideologically.