RUNNING HEAD: NEEDS AND PARTISANSHIP
WORD COUNT: 3,902
Needs for Certainty and Security and Partisanship: Individual and Contextual Heterogeneity
Christopher D. Johnston
Department of Political Science
Duke University
christopher.johnston@duke.edu
NEEDS AND PARTISANSHIP
Abstract
Research and theorizing in political psychology strongly connects a cluster of psychological
dispositions related to needs for security and certainty to right-wing political identifications and
preferences. Few theoretical or empirical examinations have posited or shown that these same
dispositions may predict left-wing orientations. The present research note reports empirical
results obtained from modeling the 2008 American National Elections Study which contains
measures of both needs for certainty and security and political partisanship. I find that such needs
differentially predict Republican (versus Democratic) identification conditional on levels of
political engagement. For engaged citizens, such needs increase Republican identification, while
for the unengaged, they increase Democratic identification. I compare these findings to two other
years of the ANES, utilizing largely identical models, and find the pattern is isolated to 2008. I
conclude by considering the relationship of these results to a broader research program linking
epistemic and existential needs to economic preferences.
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NEEDS AND PARTISANSHIP
INTRODUCTION
Research and theorizing in political psychology strongly connects a cluster of
psychological dispositions related to needs for security and certainty to right-wing political
identifications and preferences (e.g. Amodio et al. 2007; Federico and Goren 2009; Federico,
Fisher and Deason 2011; Hetherington and Weiler 2009; Jost et al. 2003; Jost, Federico and
Napier 2009; Mondak 2010; Thorisdottir and Jost 2011). From this perspective, the conservative
focus on maintaining the normative and institutional status quo is palliative for citizens
particularly high in chronic needs for security and certainty. In other words, conservative policies
constitute a “functional match” to the underlying psychology of a large subset of citizens, thus
providing a “bottom-up” foundation for political identity and ideology (Jost, Federico and Napier
2009). But are such needs always and only predictive of right-wing proclivities? The present
research note reports empirical results obtained from modeling the 2008 American National
Elections Study which contains measures of both needs for certainty and security and political
partisanship. I find that such needs differentially predict Republican (versus Democratic)
identification conditional on levels of political engagement among White Americans. For
engaged citizens, such needs increase Republican identification, while for the unengaged they
increase Democratic identification. These results are of a substantial magnitude in both
directions. Moreover, I compare these results to two other years of the ANES, utilizing largely
identical models, and find the pattern is isolated to 2008.
The present findings contribute to an ongoing effort to understand heterogeneity in the
translation of psychological dispositions into political preferences; more specifically, to
understand how the same dispositions can predict different political orientations conditional on
how citizens represent political conflict (Johnston 2011; see also Gerber et al. 2010). On the
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basis of the findings above, I offer a speculative account of the patterns uncovered, placing them
in the context of a broader research program which displays similar dynamics with distinct
dependent variables. Generally speaking, well-executed empirical models of high-quality data
form the foundation upon which a field is built. It is my hope that the present note makes such a
contribution to the literature on the psychological foundations of political orientation, and
stimulates discussion regarding heterogeneity in the dynamics of dispositional influence across
people and context.
THE LOGIC OF PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO POLITICAL ORIENTATION
While a massive literature exists on the psychological foundations of political
orientations and ideology, this work largely converges with respect to the key factors underlying
liberal and conservative preferences in the mass public. In their meta-analysis of over eighty
previous studies on the topic, Jost et al. (2003) argue that political conservatism is a form of
motivated social cognition in that conservative values and policies serve the psychological needs
of existential security and epistemic certainty (see also Jost, Federico and Napier 2009; e.g.
Federico and Goren 2009; Van Hiel, Pandelaere and Duriez 2004). Conservatism, from this
view, through its support for traditional values, institutions, and socioeconomic arrangements,
constitutes a functional match for citizens particularly high in needs for certainty and security.
The “tried and true” will typically feel more certain, and less risky, than difficult to imagine,
untested alternatives. Conversely, citizens comfortable with uncertainty and risk will be more
likely, on average, to find liberalism appealing in its focus on institutional evolution and change
in the name of equality and diversity. For the former citizens, losses likely loom larger than
gains, and vice versa for the latter group (e.g. Cesario et al. 2004; Higgins 1998).
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Recent research in political science also supports these claims. Hetherington and Weiler
(2009) find that needs for security and certainty have become increasingly related to Republican
Party identification over the last decade. Mondak (2010) and Gerber et al. (2010) demonstrate
associations between openness to experience and conscientiousness, and liberalism and
conservatism, respectively. These two traits are strongly related to the more basic psychological
needs discussed by Jost and colleagues. Openness to experience taps an affinity for diversity and
novelty, while conscientiousness involves “socially prescribed impulse control” and rule and
norm-following (Gerber et al. 2010; see also Carney et al. 2008). Oxley et al. (2008) find that
conservatives are more sensitive to threatening stimuli than liberals, evidenced by greater
galvanic skin response and startle-blink response to threatening images. Settle et al. (2010) find
that liberalism is associated with a gene variant known to predict novelty-seeking. Amodio et al.
(2007) find that liberals show a greater tendency to adjust habitual response patterns to changing
circumstances via enhanced sensitivity in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, an area implicated in
the detection of response conflict and the recruitment of attentional resources to the resolution of
such conflict (e.g. Botvinick, Cohen, & Carter 2004; Cunningham et al. 2003).
There is thus substantial empirical support for the association of needs for security and
certainty with right-wing affiliations. With few exceptions, such needs are hypothesized and
found to predict right-wing and not left-wing orientations.1 In the next section, I report the results
of a model of political orientation from the 2008 American National Elections Study which
shows a substantial relationship of such needs to left-wing affiliations among those who pay little
attention to politics, but right-wing affiliations for those who pay much attention to politics. I
1
Thorisdottir et al. (2007) argue that needs for certainty and security could potentially be related
to left-wing orientations in Eastern Europe. Despite claims to the contrary (Greenberg and Jonas
2003), there is little extant evidence for the “extremity” hypothesis that such needs are merely
related to the holding of extreme positions on the ideological continuum (Jost et al. 2007).
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then replicate this model using the 2000 and 2004 ANES, and find the reversal pattern to be
limited to 2008. In the final section of the paper, I speculate on these findings, and suggest they
may be one manifestation of a more general theoretical model linking these dispositions to
political preferences.
DATA AND VARIABLES
The data for the first analysis comes from the 2008 American National Elections Study,
consisting of approximately 2,300 respondents interviewed face-to-face prior to election day, and
about 2,100 respondents interviewed both prior to and after the election. The 2008 study also
consisted of an oversample of Black and Latino Americans. About 90% of Black Americans
interviewed for this study identified with the Democratic Party, leaving little meaningful
variation, and insufficient analytical power, for similar tests for this group of citizens. About
70% of Latinos identified with the Democratic Party, leaving enough variation for a reasonable,
if moderately powered test. The focus of my analyses below will be on White Americans, but I
include models for Latino Americans in Appendix A (Table A2). As seen, there is some
suggestion that needs for certainty and security increase Republican identification among
Latinos, but the effect is not conditional on political engagement. These results should be treated
carefully given the inefficiency of the estimates. Heterogeneity in the influence of dispositional
variables across race and ethnicity is consistent with other recent research, and more work is
needed on this topic (Gerber et al. 2010; Johnston 2011).
I measure party identification with the traditional ANES 7-point branching scale, which
allows respondents to self-categorize as independent, while still acknowledging that they “lean”
toward one party or the other. In addition, this scale distinguishes between “weak” and “strong”
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partisan identifiers. The overall scale ranges from “Strong Democrat” to “pure” independent to
“Strong Republican.” I trichotomized the variable such that “leaners” were coded in their
respective partisan categories.
I operationalize dispositional needs for certainty and security with four items utilized by
recent work to measure the construct of “authoritarianism.” The items are structured as pairwise
comparisons of values, and respondents are asked which value is more important for a child to
possess. The comparisons include: “Independent or Respect for Elders,” “Curiosity or Good
Manners,” “Obedience or Self-Reliance,” and “Considerate or Well-Behaved.” Some
respondents volunteer “Both,” and these are coded at an intermediate point. The four items were
then summed to create a single measure. A great deal of research suggests that
“authoritarianism” as a general disposition is rooted in more basic needs for certainty and
security (see Jost et al. 2003; Duckitt 2001; Feldman 2003; Lavine et al. 1999; Lavine et al.
2002; Stenner 2005). More recently, Hetherington and Weiler (2009) demonstrated the
convergent validity of this operationalization. These particular items are also face valid with
respect to tapping the underlying needs of interest to the present study. Each item considers
potential solutions to dealing with a dangerous or uncertain world, more specifically, by adhering
to established norms, rules and institutions, and respecting legitimate authorities (Duckitt 2001).
Political engagement was measured as the average of two items: the interviewer’s
subjective rating of the respondent’s knowledge of politics, and the respondent’s self-reported
interest in politics (r=.42).2 Recent theorizing and research suggests that the association of
dispositional variables to political orientations is conditional on various forms of political
2
At the time of this writing, the more commonly used, objective knowledge operationalization of
engagement had yet to be coded for the 2008 study. An identical subjective operationalization of
engagement in the 2004 ANES was highly correlated with objective knowledge, indicating that
the former provides a reasonable proxy for the latter (r=.57).
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“sophistication” (e.g. Federico, Fisher and Deason 2011; Federico and Goren 2009; Jost,
Federico and Napier 2009). Consistent with this work, the analyses below allow for variation in
the influence of needs for certainty and security across engagement.
Finally, I control for several additional variables exogenous to needs for certainty and
security, but potentially related to both needs and partisanship, including age, gender (male=1),
educational attainment (treated as a nominal variable to allow for non-linearity), income, and
employment status (1=unemployed).
DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS
I begin by considering descriptive statistics regarding the bivariate relationship between
needs for certainty and security and partisanship. I then turn to a fully specified regression
model. I divided needs for certainty and security into “Low” and “High” groups, each consisting
of approximately 20% of the sample (lower and upper 20%, respectively). I created a three-point
measure of partisanship which treats “leaners” as members of their respective parties, thus
leaving only “pure” independents as non-partisans. Figure 1A shows the relationship between
needs for certainty and security and partisan identification for the entire White sample. Each line
represents the percentage of respondents identifying with the respective group at either low or
high levels of needs for security or certainty. Moving from left to right on the x-axis gives a
sense of how the distribution of partisan affiliation in the White population changes as needs for
certainty and security increase from low to high.
First, we see that relatively few White Americans consider themselves independents in
the “pure” sense of the term. Second, this graph demonstrates changes in partisan affiliation as a
function of needs expected by past theorizing and empirical research. About 62% of low needs
citizens identify with the Democrats, while only 43% of high needs citizens identify with this
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party. Conversely, while only 32% of low needs citizens identify with the Republicans, over
50% of high needs citizens do so. These changes strongly support past theorizing, and are of a
substantial magnitude.
Recent research, however, suggests that the association between psychological
dispositions and political orientations should be conditional on political engagement (e.g.
“expertise”; Federico and Goren 2009; Federico, Fisher and Deason 2011; Jost, Federico and
Napier 2009). I thus break these patterns down further by levels of political engagement. In
Figures 1B and 1C I replicate the descriptive analysis above for the bottom 20% and top 26% of
political engagement, respectively. The results of this partition are striking, as the patterns are
largely opposite across the two groups. For the politically unengaged, a change from low to high
needs for certainty and security is associated with a change in the percentage of Democratic
identifiers from about 43% to about 62%, and a decline in independents from about 29% to about
9%. Thus, for the politically unengaged, increases in needs for certainty and security are
associated with movements out of independence and in support of the Democratic Party. This
“leftward” movement as a function of such needs is contrary to most of the recent literature on
this topic. In contrast, for the politically engaged subset of White respondents, the patterns of
identification are not only in line with recent theorizing, but exceptionally strong in terms of
substantive magnitude. At low levels of these needs, about 68% of citizens identify with the
Democrats, but only about 28% identify with the Republicans. Conversely, for citizens high in
these needs, about 26% identify with the Democrats and 68% identify with the Republicans.
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MULTIVARIATE REGRESSION ANALYSIS
Does this basic “reversal” pattern across levels of political engagement persist in the
context of a more fully specified regression model? I estimated a multinomial logit regression of
the three-point partisanship variable on needs for certainty and security, their interaction with
political engagement, and all controls specified above.3 These estimates are shown in Table A1
in the Appendix. As multinomial logit estimates are very difficult to interpret, I report the key
substantive results in Figure 2 below. Each bar represents the estimated marginal effect of needs
for certainty and security on the probability of identification with each of the three partisan
groups. I report these estimates separately for the 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles of political
engagement. The patterns can thus be interpreted as the expected change in the distribution of
partisanship for each engagement group as needs for certainty and security change from low to
high levels. The extended spikes represent 95% confidence bounds on these estimates.
First, for low engaged citizens, a change from low to high needs for certainty and security
predicts a substantively large and statistically significant increase in the probability of
Democratic identification (B=.45), and a corresponding decrease in both Independent (B=-.34)
and Republican (B=-.12) identification, although the latter change is not statistically significant.
These results correspond very closely to the descriptive results above. For the highly engaged, by
contrast, a change from low to high needs corresponds with a large and significant increase in
Republican identification (B=.61), and a large and significant decrease in Democratic
identification (B=-.62), with no expected change in Independent identification. This also
corresponds closely with the descriptive results. Finally, as would be expected, the moderately
3
Treating partisanship as a 7-point scale and estimating an ordered probit does not change the
key substantive results, i.e., a strong increase in Democratic identification among low engaged
citizens, and a strong increase in Republican identification among high engaged citizens.
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engaged fall in-between, but the dynamics are closer in substance to the politically engaged.
Moving from low to high on needs is associated with a significant increase in Republican
identification (B=.24), a significant decrease in Democratic identification (-.19), and a
marginally significant decrease in Independent identification (B=-.05).
In summary, both descriptive and model-based approaches indicate that the association of
needs for security and certainty with partisan identification is exactly opposite across levels of
political engagement for White Americans in 2008.
REPLICATIONS IN 2000 AND 2004
I turn now to largely identical models of partisan identification in the 2000 and 2004
American National Elections Studies. The only difference across these three models is the
measurement of political engagement. In 2000 and 2004 I take advantage of the inclusion of
objective knowledge items. In 2004 the knowledge items consisted of four office identifications,
and two items concerning party control of the House and Senate. In 2000, there were four office
identification items, four items concerning the states from which the Presidential and VicePresidential candidates come, and the two questions concerning party control. Except for these
differences, I estimated identical models of partisanship. All variable were again recoded to
range from zero to one prior to analysis.
The model estimates are shown in Table A1 of the Appendix. The key findings for the
marginal effect of needs for certainty and security, across percentiles of political engagement, are
shown in Figures 3A and 3B below. They are structured identically to that of Figure 2 above.
Looking first at the results from the 2000 ANES, I find no significant changes in partisanship for
citizens at the low end of political engagement, although there is some suggestion of an increase
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in Democratic identification, and a corresponding decrease in Republican identification. Even if
we ignore significance levels, however, the magnitudes of the changes are only about one-third
of those seen in 2008. Similar to 2008, however, I find significant decreases in Democratic
identification, and significant increases in Republican identification, for both moderately and
highly engaged citizens. Moreover, the magnitude of the effect of needs for certainty and
security increases substantially from moderate to high.
A nearly identical pattern is seen in the 2004 results. Once again, there is no significant
change in the distribution of partisanship as a function of needs among citizens at the lower end
of political engagement, and the direction of the observed change in point estimates is opposite
to that of 2008. Moreover, replicating both 2000 and 2008, there is a significant decrease in the
probability of Democratic identification, and a significant increase in the probability of
Republican identification, for both the moderately and highly engaged as needs moves from low
to high.
In summary, 2000 and 2004 look very distinct from 2008 when examining citizens at the
low end of political engagement. In 2008, needs for certainty and security among these citizens
dramatically increased the probability of Democratic identification. In contrast, I find no
significant changes in the distribution of partisanship for these citizens in 2000 and 2004. In
2004, the observed estimates were in the opposite direction to 2008. Conversely, the moderately
and highly engaged in 2000 and 2004 look very similar to their counterparts in 2008. For both
groups, needs for certainty and security increase the probability of Republican identification at
the expense of Democratic identification, and these distributional changes in partisanship are
more pronounced for the highly engaged relative to the moderately engaged.
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DISCUSSION AND THEORETICAL SPECULATIONS
The present paper began as a modeling exercise with expectations for similarly
conditional relationships of needs for certainty and security to partisan identification across three
years of American politics. Prior to analysis, it was expected that political engagement would
strongly moderate the strength of the relationship of needs to Republican identification, but not
the qualitative nature of the relationship. In 2008, however, the pattern which emerged indicated
that the relationship of needs for certainty and security to partisanship was exactly opposite
across levels of engagement. In other words, rather than simply limiting the relationship of needs
to identity, political engagement reversed the relationship. At low levels of engagement, citizens
higher in these needs were about 45 percentage points more likely to identify as a Democrat than
those low in needs for certainty and security. To my knowledge, this is the first demonstration of
a substantively meaningful relationship of these psychological dispositions to left-wing political
orientations in the United States. Indeed, while there have been suggestions that such
dispositions might be related to left-wing orientations in other regions of the world (Greenberg
and Jonas 2003; Thorisdottir et al. 2007), the expectation for Western industrialized nations in
general remains consistently right-leaning.
The obvious question, then, is why such a pattern emerges at all in the United States, and
why it is restricted to 2008. Given the lack of theoretical foresight, all theorizing herein must be
treated carefully. Nonetheless, I find it worthwhile to relate this finding to a more general
research program which seeks heterogeneity in the relationship of needs for certainty and
security, and their related dispositions, to political preferences. In several other sets of analyses, I
have theorized and found that these needs are related in qualitatively distinct ways to economic
preferences and ideology conditional on both citizen and context (see Johnston 2011). More
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specifically, I have found that needs for certainty and security predict economic liberalism for
the unengaged, and economic conservatism for the engaged.
The logic underlying this dynamic is straightforward. Previous theorizing which expects
these needs to be associated with economic conservatism relies on the notion that citizens will
understand economic conflict in symbolic terms related to institutional stability and change. In
other words, those seeking to minimize uncertainty and threat are drawn to economic
conservatism for its support of traditional economic values and socioeconomic hierarchies (Jost
et al. 2003). The standard assumption in political science, however, is that citizens differ in the
level of abstraction through which they understand politics, with politically engaged citizens
more readily assimilating the ideological content of policies through attention to elite discourse
(e.g. Converse 1964; Pollock, Lilie and Vittes 1993; Jost, Federico and Napier 2009). On the
other hand, citizens without exposure to elite discourse should draw on considerations which are
available to them, namely those of personal or familial interests. As Converse (1964) notes,
“moving from top to bottom of this information dimension, the character of objects that are
central in a belief system undergoes systematic change. These objects shift from the remote,
generic, and abstract to the increasingly simple, concrete, or ‘close to home.’ Where potential
political objects are concerned, this progression tends to be from abstract, ‘ideological’ principles
to the more obviously recognizable social groupings or charismatic leaders and finally to such
objects of immediate experience as family, job, and immediate associates” (p. 213).
If economic issues are viewed in more concrete terms, however, we should expect
security and certainty needs to promote economic liberalism for its role in providing social
protection and insurance against the vagaries of free market capitalism. Stated a different way,
we should expect that citizens who are risk averse will see government provided social welfare
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as uncertainty-decreasing and security-enhancing (see, e.g., Iversen 2005; Iversen and Soskice
2001; Moene and Wallerstein 2001; Rhem 2009). Consider, for example, Tomasi’s (2012)
description of the ideal world of classical (i.e. free market) liberalism:
Within the stable frame of strong but limited government, however, all else is change. Social order – the
character and orientation of human commitments, expectations, and desires – is constantly recreating itself
from within. Patterns of distribution within the social world are not a reflection of anyone’s intention or
design, but emerge as the unplanned and ever-changing product of choices individuals make in pursuit of
their goals and ends…order would be the ever-changing product of human freedom under conditions of
economic freedom and formal legal equality.
From such a perspective, it is quite straightforward to expect heightened needs for certainty and
security to enhance the appeal of government intervention in the free market. Beyond my own
work on domestic economic policy, there is recent empirical evidence that this is indeed the case
in other policy arenas such as immigration and free trade (Ehrlich and Maestas 2010; Johnston
forthcoming; see also Kam and Simas 2010).
Viewed from this perspective, the unique dynamic of 2008 may be less mysterious. This
survey took place in a time period of immense economic uncertainty. The politically unengaged,
inattentive to the symbolic conflicts occurring at the elite level, are more likely to view partisan
divides through the lens of the personal and concrete. If this is indeed the case, then it makes
good sense that unengaged citizens high in needs for certainty and security would flock to the
Democratic Party in 2008, whose long-term imagery is associated with government intervention
in the economic sphere, and away from the Republican Party, whose leader in the second Bush
had just presided over the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
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APPENDIX A. FULL MODEL RESULTS
Table A1. Multinomial Regression Results, White Americans
______________________________________________________________________________
2008 ANES
2000 ANES
2004 ANES
Variable
B
SE
p
B
SE
p
B
SE
p
______________________________________________________________________________
As Democrat
NCS
NCS X Engage
Engagement
Age
Male
Education 2
Education 3
Education 4
Education 5
Education 6
Income
Unemployed
Constant
3.55
-5.40
5.49
.26
-.72
-.33
-.54
.24
.09
-.52
-.32
-1.12
1.19
1.90
1.31
.56
.26
.44
.46
.59
.62
.57
.53
.93
.00
.00
.00
.65
.01
.46
.24
.69
.89
.37
.54
.23
.25
-1.25
3.46
1.24
-.53
-.74
-.64
-.75
-.72
-.06
-.41
-.53
.67
.71
1.75
1.13
.70
.24
.45
.49
.55
.53
.72
.76
.47
.73
.73
.47
.00
.08
.03
.10
.19
.17
.18
.93
.58
.27
.36
-.28
-.07
2.31
-.42
-.73
.11
.23
.18
.56
.19
-.53
-.01
1.28
.99
1.84
1.19
.64
.32
.49
.55
.69
.66
.71
.63
.52
.85
.77
.97
.05
.50
.02
.82
.68
.80
.40
.79
.40
.98
.13
As Republican
NCS
NCS X Engage
Engagement
Age
Male
Education 2
Education 3
Education 4
Education 5
Education 6
Income
Unemployed
Constant
1.03
.17
2.51
.65
-.51
.18
.14
.94
.49
1.37
-.25
-1.60
1.21
1.92
1.31
.57
.26
.47
.48
.61
.64
.58
.55
.95
.39
.93
.06
.25
.05
.70
.77
.12
.44
.02
.64
.09
-.66
2.96
1.15
.84
-.20
-.23
.15
.09
.25
.75
1.02
-.62
.12
.73
1.78
1.15
.72
.24
.48
.52
.58
.55
.74
.74
.50
.76
.37
.10
.32
.24
.40
.63
.78
.88
.65
.31
.17
.21
.87
.32
2.14
1.47
-.77
-.61
.10
.68
.58
1.14
.43
-.11
-.14
.65
1.00
1.86
1.22
.63
.32
.50
.55
.68
.66
.71
.63
.52
.87
.75
.25
.23
.23
.06
.85
.21
.39
.08
.55
.87
.79
.46
N
947
1025
754
Pseudo-R^2
.09
.07
.07
______________________________________________________________________________
Notes: Maximum likelihood estimates and standard errors. The base category is independent.
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Table A2. Replication for Latino Americans, 2008 ANES
___________________________________________________________
Variable
B
SE
p
B
SE
p
___________________________________________________________
As Democrat
NCS
NCS X Engage
Engagement
Age
Male
Education 2
Education 3
Education 4
Education 5
Income
Unemployed
Constant
1.01
1.40
2.68
-.72
1.67
.85
.86
.32
.76
-.30
-.92
.97
.89
1.04
.43
.64
.56
.89
.94
.98
.73
1.02
.30
.12
.01
.09
.01
.13
.33
.74
.44
.68
.37
1.67
-1.10
2.17
2.65
-.72
1.67
.86
.85
.32
.74
-.30
-1.39
2.22
3.47
2.57
1.05
.43
.64
.56
.89
.94
.98
.72
1.72
.45
.75
.40
.01
.09
.01
.13
.34
.74
.45
.68
.42
As Republican
NCS
NCS X Engage
Engagement
Age
Male
Education 2
Education 3
Education 4
Education 5
Income
Unemployed
Constant
1.98
.94
1.55
-.57
1.64
.66
.84
.76
2.36
-1.92
-3.07
1.09
1.03
1.18
.48
.71
.66
.99
1.04
1.13
1.23
1.19
.07
.36
.19
.24
.02
.32
.40
.47
.04
.12
.01
1.95
-.07
.93
1.53
-.57
1.64
.66
.83
.75
2.35
-1.93
-3.00
2.58
3.97
3.01
1.18
.48
.71
.66
.99
1.04
1.13
1.23
2.06
.45
.99
.76
.19
.24
.02
.32
.40
.47
.04
.12
.15
N
331
331
Pseudo-R^2
.08
.08
___________________________________________________________
Notes: Maximum likelihood estimates and standard errors. The base
category is independent.
17
NEEDS AND PARTISANSHIP
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Figure 1. Descriptive Analysis of Needs for Certainty and Security and Partisanship, 2008 ANES
A. All Whites
% Republican
% Independent
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
% Democrat
Bottom 20% Needs
Top 20% Needs
B. Bottom 20% of Political Engagement
% Republican
% Independent
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
% Democrat
Bottom 20% Needs
Top 20% Needs
C. Top 20% of Political Engagement
% Republican
% Independent
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
% Democrat
Bottom 20% Needs
Top 20% Needs
21
NEEDS AND PARTISANSHIP
Figure 2. Estimated Marginal Effects of Needs on Partisanship, 2008 ANES
Med Engagement
High Engagement
-1
-.5
0
.5
1
Low Engagement
D
I
R
D
I
Notes: Spikes are 95% confidence intervals
22
R
D
I
R
NEEDS AND PARTISANSHIP
Figure 3. Estimated Marginal Effects of Needs on Partisanship
A. 2000 ANES
Med Engagement
High Engagement
-1
-.5
0
.5
1
Low Engagement
D
I
R
D
I
R
D
I
R
Notes: Spikes are 95% confidence intervals
B. 2004 ANES
Med Engagement
High Engagement
-1
-.5
0
.5
1
Low Engagement
D
I
R
D
I
Notes: Spikes are 95% confidence intervals
23
R
D
I
R