Political influence across generations: partisanship and candidate evaluations in the 2008 election

Abstract

Recent scholarship in political socialization has moved beyond traditional transmission models of parent-driven socialization to consider alternative pathways, like trickle-up socialization and its predictors. However, these studies have paid less attention to the diverse ways in which parents and children develop discrete political orientations, especially during a competitive presidential campaign. In this study, we examine various pathways through which influence occurs across generations in terms of partisanship and candidate evaluations. Our results suggest that while harmonious attitudes remain the norm, there are substantial opportunities for youth to demonstrate their independence, particularly when gaining perspectives from schools and digital media sources. Our findings indicate the importance of exploring how youth and their parents come to understand politics and the forces that shape youth socialization.

Keywords:

• political socialization
• party affiliation
• candidate evaluations
• civic education
• social media

Acknowledgments

The research team acknowledges support from the following sources: the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics at the University of Arkansas: the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications and the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Program at the University of Michigan; the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri; the University of Texas Office of the Vice President for Research; and the Hamel Faculty Fellowship, the Graduate School, and the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin. Dhavan Shah of Wisconsin is principal investigator for this survey panel. The authors of this paper received additional support from the Spencer Foundation to conduct further analyses of these data. Any conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the supporting sources or participating faculty.

Notes on contributors

Emily K. Vraga is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at George Mason University. Her research examines how political identity is socialized and its impact on the processing of media content, particularly disagreeable content, in the digital environment. [email: [email protected]]

Leticia Bode is an assistant professor in the Communication, Culture, and Technology master's program at Georgetown University. Her work lies at the intersection of communication, technology, and political behavior, emphasizing the role communication and information technologies may play in the acquisition and use of political information. [email: [email protected]]

JungHwan Yang is a PhD student in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on the implication of information technology in politics and social interaction. [email: [email protected]]

Stephanie Edgerly is an assistant professor in the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. Her research explores how changes in the new media landscape provide individuals with new opportunities for political engagement. [email: [email protected]]

Kjerstin Thorson is an assistant professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research explores the effects of digital and social media on political engagement, activism, and persuasion, especially among youth. [email: [email protected]]

Chris Wells is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research considers young citizens’ styles of civic participation and expression in the digital age. [email: [email protected]]

Dhavan V. Shah is the Louis A. & Mary E. Maier-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin, where he is Director of the Mass Communication Research Center in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Shah's research focuses on communication influence on social judgments, civic and political engagement, and health support and behavior. [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1. Rates of agreement vary across demographic categories. For example, 5–10% of middle-class recruits typically consent compared to less than 1% of urban minorities. It is from this pre-recruited group of roughly 500,000 people that demographically balanced samples are constructed for collection.

2. We acknowledge that this is not an ideal means by which to sample both children and parents. Ideally, we would conduct separate interviews or send separate surveys to parents and children. However, this would dramatically lower our response rate of complete parent–child dyads (as it would be more likely that either parent or child would complete their survey but not both), which would therefore increase non-response bias, already a growing concern in survey research (Groves, 2006). We acknowledge that privacy concerns are valid in this context, and that parents and children completing a joint survey may lead to more biased answers from both, as they try to please or meet expectations of their family members. Despite these concerns, fairly high concept-oriented family communication patterns (M = 3.82, SD = 0.85 in a five-point scale) among our sample indicates that the parents are very open to their children's disagreement, which alleviates potential bias in children's response. This survey met ethical guidelines, including approval from the Institutional Review Board at University of Wisconsin–Madison.

3. To see if our final panel might be subject to selection bias, we compared those respondents in our final panel (n = 531) with those who completed only our first-wave survey (n = 517). The final panel and the first-wave-only participants were not different in terms of age, gender, or other demographic and political orientations. The only difference discovered was in household income, with panel participants slightly lower than non-participants.

4. About a third of the mismatches are due to adolescent respondents failing to provide information on their age in either wave. We also compared our panel respondents with the second-wave respondents whose responses were discarded in the panel data analysis due to mismatches of their personal information between the two waves of data collection (n = 207). Panel respondents were not different in terms of other demographic and social-structural variables from those second-wave respondents whose responses were dropped from the analysis. With proper controls, we have little reason to believe that the nature of the relationships among our key variables is different in the general population than it is in our matched panel respondents.

5. Democrat: 36%, Independent 23.9%, Republican 35.6% (Wave 1), Democrat: 37.5%, Independent: 23.7%, Republican: 36.3% (Wave 2) for parent; Democrat: 32.6%, Independent 32.4%, Republican: 23.7% (Wave 1), Democrat: 39.2%, Independent 27.7%, Republican: 30.1% (Wave 2) for child.

6. McCain favorability: Favorable: 34.7%, Neutral: 26.9%, Unfavorable: 35.4% (Wave 1), Favorable: 33.5%, Neutral: 18.6%, Unfavorable: 46.5% (Wave 2) for parent; Favorable 34.8%, Neutral: 35.2%, Unfavorable: 27.3% (Wave 1), Favorable: 40.8%, Neutral: 22%, Unfavorable: 36.3% (Wave 2) for child. Obama favorability: Favorable: 42.4%, Neutral: 21.3%, Unfavorable: 33.7% (Wave 1), Favorable: 38.6%, Neutral: 15.6%, Unfavorable: 44.6% (Wave 2) for parent; Favorable: 38.1%, Neutral: 25.4%, Unfavorable: 34.3% (Wave 1), Favorable: 31.6%, Neutral: 18.5%, Unfavorable: 48.9% (Wave 2) for child.

7. One item – organized as a group activity – was dropped from these indices, as it cross-loaded with both factors.