Anti-Climacus

LINK: To continue a bit on with the below, the following question from Dean Esmay:

"I guess my real question is, is this really the common wisdom among political scientists? That partisanship-first is how the vast majority of American voters operate? Party first, ideas second?"

This is the way is was taught to me, with some exceptions:

Obviously, interest group activity is tangental to this, but it would be anyway, since interests groups are more often focused on legislation, etc, rather than electoral outcomes (I'll punt to OGIW on this one, but I'd imagine most interest groups would rather get their ideal law passed than have their ideal candidate elected).

the second would be that people who write and read blogs primarily about politics are much more likely to be in the portion of the electorate where general findings seem to apply less.

Then again, there are exceptions: no one likes to particularly admit that they fall back on party affiliation, though most people probably do.