How do ordinary citizens form their political judgments, and how good are those judgments from a normative perspective? The central claim of this book is that high-quality political judgment hinges less on citizens' cognitive ability than on their willingness to temporarily suspend partisan habits and follow the "evidence" wherever it leads. Ambivalent partisans are those who experience a disjuncture between their political identities and their evaluations of party performance. Drawing on both experimental and survey ...
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How do ordinary citizens form their political judgments, and how good are those judgments from a normative perspective? The central claim of this book is that high-quality political judgment hinges less on citizens' cognitive ability than on their willingness to temporarily suspend partisan habits and follow the "evidence" wherever it leads. Ambivalent partisans are those who experience a disjuncture between their political identities and their evaluations of party performance. Drawing on both experimental and survey methods -- as well as five decades of American political history -- the authors demonstrate that compared to other citizens, ambivalent partisans perceive the political world accurately, form their policy preferences in a principled manner, and communicate those preferences by making issues an important component of their electoral decisions.
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