The Causal Relationships between Issues, Candidate Evaluations, Party Identification, and Vote Choice--the View From "Rolling Thunder"

Abstract

This paper uses the theoretical framework developed by Granger in his analysis of causality in dynamic systems to examine the short-term causal relationships between party identification, issue perceptions, candidate evaluations, and voting behavior in the United States. The results show that the revisionist analysis, which suggests that partisanship is an endogenous function of cognitive-based issue perceptions, is not supported. However, the revisionists are correct in asserting that partisanship is unstable over time. But the stability of partisanship is a separate question from its exogeneity in the vote function. It is argued that partisanship is a tally of affective evaluations, which are quite distinct from issue-based evaluations. Partisanship, candidate evaluations, and issues all independently Granger-cause voting behavior, and the former is more important than the latter in determining the vote choice.