The “L” Word

Abstract

In recent years, the electorate has sorted along ideological lines. Republican identifiers have grown more likely to self-identify as conservatives. Democrats, however, have been slow to embrace the liberal label. And while many Americans are operationally liberal and express support for liberal policy positions, in symbolic terms, the American electorate is much more conservative in nature and appears reluctant to hew to the liberal label. The uneven nature of partisan sorting and the observed symbolic/operational divide have both been linked to Republican efforts at making “liberal” a dirty word, but researchers have yet to offer a direct test of the effects of exposure to anti-liberal rhetoric. In this study, I rectify this shortcoming using the 2004 University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW)/Brigham Young University (BYU) panel study coupled with data on the content of candidates’ campaign advertising from the Wisconsin Advertising Project. I find that exposure to anti-liberal campaign messages had a direct effect on evaluations of Democratic candidates, vote intention, and vote choice, but only in senate races. At the same time, self-identified ideology was unmoved by elite efforts at disparaging the liberal label—thereby calling into question simple versions of a common explanation for the existence of conservative Democrats and “conflicted” conservatives.