Work

Division Does Not Imply Predictability: Demographics Continue to Reveal Little About Voting and Partisanship

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: What are the political consequences of ongoing social sorting? We evaluate the degree of social sorting and mass polarization using the predictability of partisanship and voting decisions as quantities of interest. Contrary to expectations, demographic sorting has not produced a very predictable electorate. Models trained on nothing more than demographic labels from public opinion surveys (1952–2020) predict only 63.9% of two-party vote choices and 63.4% of partisan IDs correctly out-of-sample—whether they be based on logistic regressions or tree-based machine learning models. Moreover, demographics’ predictive power over vote choice or partisan affiliation shows a surprising stability over time. We argue that while select demographics’ marginal effects may appear to be evidence of social sorting, the joint predictability of political behavior using only demographic characteristics has been, and still is, modest at best.

Source: Political Behavior

DOI: 10.1007/s11109-022-09816-z

Authors: Seo-young Silvia Kim, Jan Zilinsky

Institutions: American University, Technical University of Munich

Language: English

Topic: Electoral Systems and Political Participation

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,890

Funder: Technische Universität München