Patterns in Party Identification Meaning: How Conflicting and Negative Identity Content Affect Political Behaviour

Although party identification is a major concept in election studies, not much is known about party identification meaning and its consequences. Based on the existing notions of partisanship as a social psychological and a rationalistic concept, I develop a coding scheme and analyze an open-ended question that was asked in a study (N=1,009) in May 2013. The various content dimensions on the individual level can be aggregated into two different types - a social psychological and rationalistic content type. In addition, specific subtypes, such as an antagonistic subtype that bases the identification on the differentiation of the own party from other parties and a negative evaluation subtype that dislikes the own party, have a significant effect on the perceptions of the other parties and vote choice.