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Partisanship, Ideology, And The Sorting Of The American Mass Public, Nicholas T. Davis

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a story about the divisions that characterize the mass public. Specifically, it explores how Americans think about politics, and, in particular, how citizens connect their attitudes, beliefs, and, vitally, ideological identity to their partisan affiliation—a phenomenon known as sorting. Practically, this project proceeds in two parts. In Part 1, I investigate the nature of partisan sorting in the mass public. Chapter 2 reviews the extant scholarly literature regarding partisanship and ideology, or the raw materials of sorting. Drawing on this research, I operationalize two types of sorting in Chapter 3 and compare how different measurement protocols affect …