Some researchers view party identification as "a form of social identity",[1][2] in the same way that a person identifies with a religious or ethnic group.
This description would make party identification a stable perspective, which develops as a consequence of personal, family, social, and environmental factors.
[3] In other countries, party identification has often been considered a subset of other levels of identity such as class, religion, or language; or to vary rapidly over time.
[4][5][6] Partisan voters judge character flaws more harshly in rival candidates than their own, believe the economy is doing better when their own party is in power, and underplay scandals and failures of their own side.
[7] A recent study shows that the impact of partisanship is likely to be the largest relative to other social identities over class, religion, gender, age, and even nationality, by analyzing 25 democracies in Europe,[8] whose party identification has been viewed to be more flexible and weaker compared to that of the United States.
The Michigan model, based in large part on parental socialization, was developed to explain American voting behaviour.
It argues that partisan identity formed slowly in a Bayesian process as voters accumulate data and opinions over a lifetime.
By late in life, a single new piece of information will have little effect, but there is always the opportunity for partisan identity to change and will fluctuate based on short-term events for many voters.
[16] According to Paul Allen Beck and colleagues, "the stronger an individual's party identification was, the more likely he or she was to vote a straight ticket.
[19] This is often the case when party coalitions are in flux, such as the Republican realignment in the Southern United States in the second half of the twentieth century.