On the one hand, scholars emphasize the importance of a party identification for political preferences. Others argue that voters develop a party identification based on their issue preferences. For the United States, prior studies have found stronger effects of party identification on policy preferences. Current studies assume that this relationship works the other way round in Europe due to a low party identification and unclear party profiles, while the influence of party polarization remains unknown. Moreover, polarization in European countries is subject to different conditions due to its multiparty political systems. It is hypothesized that European voters do not align their views as strongly as American citizens that live in a two-party choice set. Hence, I argue that the effects for preferences based on party identification depend on polarization, which causes different outcomes in European countries. The research question focusses on whether voters change their preferences based on their party ID or vice versa. In addition, under what conditions do preferences change based on the party ID? The paper sets out to disentangle the various aspects of polarization into causal categories, and aims to apply the concept from the US-American context to European countries. Therefore, a cross-national comparison between the United Kingdom and Germany is conducted to answer the question of when voters align their preferences to their party identification. Applying a cross-lagged structural equation model, the first preliminary results on Germany and the United Kingdom show that voters change their preferences in light of their party ID on conflictual issues. In contrast, preferences on consensual issues, e.g. on the European Integration process in Germany, contribute more to identify with a party. Moreover, the findings from a cross-lagged structural equation model confirm that a polarized party position causes voters to change their preferences based on their party ID. The paper discusses the implications of the findings for party strategies and microlevel party identification.
