Nominal Partisanship: Names as Political Identity Signals

Abstract

ABSTRACTSending a signal of partisan identity carries greater expressive benefit, but also greater expected cost, for members of the public when they are more exposed to adherents of the other party. To see whether the cost or the benefit dominates in the decision to send partisan signals, this article considers partisan signals sent by names of newborns, particularly girls named “Reagan,” in US state-years from 1976 to 2011. Results indicate that the benefits of expressing identity increase more than do costs in the face of a large out-group: higher proportions of Democrats in a state increase the relationship between Republican populations and the tendency to name daughters “Reagan.”