Party Identification Political Behavior And The American Electorate

Review: ?Kamieniecki presents the findings and conclusions of his extensive investigation of party identification. The heart of the reserach question is the validity of standard party-identification and partisan-strength scales. One of the strengths of this analysis is the comprehensive review of the literature on party identification.

Special attention is focused on research that critiques the conclusions of the Michigan school's party identification scheme. Building on Weisberg's multidimensional model of party identification, Kamieniecki develops his own conceptualization of party identification, one which consists of partisan direction, partisan strength, and party independence.

The author examines the social characteristics of the electorate--not only Republicans, Democrats, and independents, but also of another group of strong party identifiers to determine if the social characteristics of strong party identifiers differ from independents and others with weaker ties to the Democrat or Republican parties.

The findings of this study--based solely on 1980 election studies--indicate that partisan strength and independence are two separate components of party orientation. Extensive bibliography.?-Choice