QUESTION WORDING AND PARTISANSHIP - CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN PARTY LOYALTIES DURING THE 1992 ELECTION CAMPAIGN

Gallup macropartisanship varies more over time than aggregate measures of partisanship employing the standard Michigan Survey Research Cente r (SRC) party identification measure, but previous analyses do not pro vide direct evidence about why Gallup macropartisanship is more variab le. Although these differences could result from the short-term focus of the Gallup party affiliation question, aggregate-level analyses can not test the effects of question wording directly. Between March and O ctober 1992, we conducted a series of question-wording experiments, em ploying six statewide computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) sur veys of Michigan adults, including a four-wave panel study. Our analys es strongly suggest that the Gallup measure responds more to short-ter m political conditions and clearly demonstrate that the Gallup measure is less stable over time. These individual-level results help explain why Gallup macropartisanship varies more over time than aggregate mea sures of partisanship employing the standard SRC measure and raise que stions about the degree to which one can generalize from analyses usin g the Gallup data to the research literature on party identification.