A Further Test of the “Party Over Policy” Effect: Political Leadership and Ethnic Minority Policies

Abstract

This study tests the “party over policy” effect by focusing on the influence of political leadership on the public's acceptance of cultural diversity and affirmative action policies. Both people on the mainstream political left and the right were expected to agree more with statements of a leader of the political party they identify with compared to a leader of a party they do not identify with, independent of the pro- or anti-immigrant content of the statement and independently of their political orientation. The findings from two framing experiments embedded in a representative survey among the native population in the Netherlands support this expectation.