In sum, our findings suggest that party elites have more agency in shaping group linkages than often thought - even in the short term.

Full paper link: fghjorth.github.io/workingpaper...

This relationship is robust to various specifications and is driven by group appeals to especially religious, class and age groups. Further, we find that while purely ‘symbolic’ appeals matter, ‘substantive’ appeals that mention policy are more effective by an order of magnitude.

We find that voters appear highly attuned to how party elites talk about different social groups. Adding a single net positive appeal to a given group on a daily basis over the course of 3 months improves a perceived group-party linkage by ~6 points on average.

To test this, we develop a novel automated approach that uses language models to measure group appeals observationally. Using UK data, we connect citizens’ perceived group linkages in surveys to party elites’ group appeals in parliamentary speech spanning three decades.

It’s often assumed that politicians’ use of group appeals -- valenced references to social groups -- can shape party reputations. We test this assumption, arguing that voters keep ‘running tallies’ of elite rhetoric to continuously update views of whose interests parties represent.

Oooh yes definitely. I really like this one: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I’ll also send you a working paper!

Kæmpe tillykke! 🎉

It definitely does. Hard to infer results from a forced conjoint if the real world choice situation includes an option to abstain.

Luckily this is not hard to solve design-wise!