Negative Partisanship within the Social Identity Approach Effects of Out-Group Derogation on Vote Choice in Germany

Party identification became rapidly one of the most used concepts in empirical election studies since its first emergence in the 1950’s. Although negative party identification is part of the original concept by Campbell et al. (1960), it has been rarely analyzed in empirical studies as the mainstream of party identification research concentrates on positive party identification. As negative party identification was only mentioned in passing by Campbell et al. (1960), there exist several different notions of negative party identification and its operationalization. This paper conceptualizes negative party identification and evaluations within the social identity framework and explores their applicability and effects for a complex multi-party setting. I am able to show that negative party evaluations have an effect on vote choice and the time of voting decision in multi-party systems but that these effects only exist between ideological camps. 1 [email protected]