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Geoffrey C. Layman is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University,Nashville, TN 37235 (geoff.layman@vanderbilt.edu). Thomas M. Carsey is AssociateProfessor of Political Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2230(tcarsey@garnet.acns.fsu.edu).

A previous version of this article was presented at the 2000 Annual Meeting of theAmerican Political Science Association. We wish to thank Ted Carmines, John Geer,Bruce Oppenheimer, Paul Sniderman, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpfulcomments and suggestions. The data used in this study were obtained from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. The Consortium bears no re-sponsibility for their use.

American Journal of Political Science , Vol. 46, No. 4, October 2002, Pp. 786000

2002 by the Midwest Political Science Association ISSN 0092-5853

Party Polarization and Conflict Extensionin the American ElectorateGeoffrey C. Layman Vanderbilt UniversityThomas M. Carsey Florida State University

In recent decades, Democratic andRepublican party elites have grownincreasingly polarized on all three ofthe major domestic policy agendas:social welfare, racial, and culturalissues. We contend that the massresponse has been characterized not

by the traditional expectation of con-flict displacement or the more recentaccount of ideological realignment,but by what we term conflict exten-sion. Mass attitudes toward the threeagendas have remained distinct, butthe parties in the electorate havegrown more polarized on all three.Conflict extension, rather than conflictdisplacement or ideological realign-ment, has occurred because therehas been a limited mass response tothe growth of elite-level party polar-ization. Only party identifiers who areaware of party elite polarization oneach of the issue dimensions havebrought their social welfare, racial,and cultural issue attitudes towardthe consistently liberal or consistentlyconservative stands of Democraticand Republican elites. Analysesusing data from the 1972 through2000 National Election Studies sup-

port both the aggregate- and indi-vidual-level predictions of the conflictextension perspective.

A n expanding body of research suggests that political party elites inthe United States have grown increasingly polarized along a singleideological dimension (Rohde 1991; Aldrich 1995; Poole andRosenthal 1997; Collie and Mason 2000; Jacobson 2000; Fleisher and Bond2000; Hetherington 2001). In Congress, racial issues such as civil rights andracial equality and cultural issues such as abortion, homosexual rights, andschool prayer initially divided the parties internally, not externally. How-ever, congressional Republicans grew more conservative than Democratson racial issues in the 1960s (Carmines and Stimson 1989) and on culturalissues in the 1980s and 1990s (Adams 1997; Layman 2001), drawing theseformerly cross-cutting issue agendas into the dominant liberal-conserva-tive dimension (Poole and Rosenthal 1997). Meanwhile, the elections of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and a Republican congressional majority in 1994repolarized party debate on the social welfare issues that have structuredparty conflict since the New Deal (Rohde 1991; Abramowitz and Saunders1998). There is also considerable evidence that the parties convention del-egates and grassroots-level activists have grown more polarized on socialwelfare, racial, and cultural issues (Stone, Rapoport, and Abramowitz 1990;Layman and Carsey 2000).

Such definitive changes in party elite ideology generally spark a re-sponse from the mass electorate (Zaller 1992; Nie, Verba, and Petrocik 1976; Carmines and Stimson 1989). In this article, we contend that thereshould be a limited mass responseconfined largely to party identifierswho are aware of party polarization on all three of the domestic issue agen-daswhich should produce an aggregate result that we call conflict exten-sion. Citizens domestic policy attitudes should remain divided into sepa-rate dimensions, but party conflictin the form of increased party

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polarization should extend to each of these dimen-sions. After considering the existing perspectives on themass response to elite-level ideological change, we de-velop our conflict extension argument. We then evaluateit empirically by examining aggregate-level electoralpatterns from 1972 through 2000 and by testing ourindividual-level explanations for these patterns.

Existing Views on the Mass Responseto Elite Partisan Change

Some scholars contend that the growth of elite-levelideological polarization has led to a similar outcome atthe mass level: an ideological realignment of the par-ties electoral coalitions characterized by increased lib-eral-conservative polarization (Abramowitz and

Saunders 1998, 2000; Levine, Carmines, and Huckfeldt1997; Putz and Shepherd 2001). However, these research-ers employ unidimensional indicators of mass ideology,thus assuming (rather than demonstrating) that mass at-titudes toward various policy issues are structured alongthe same single liberal-conservative dimension that de-fines elite-level party conflict.

That description runs counter to traditional per-spectives on mass partisan change, which typically arguethat party conflict is dominated by and party polariza-tion takes shape on a single policy agenda (Key 1955;Schattschneider 1960; Burnham 1970; Riker 1982;

Sundquist 1983; Carmines and Stimson 1989). Duringperiods of stable party alignment, the parties mass coali-tions are structured around that agenda, with each coali-tion unified by its attitudes toward the dominant issuesbut potentially divided on other issues that remain in thepolitical background. Thus, when a new issue agendathat cuts across the existing line of party cleavageemerges, party polarization on the new agenda shouldresult in a decline in party conflict on the old agenda. AsSundquist argues, the characteristic that identifies aparty realignment [is] . . . the displacement of one con-flict by another (1983, 13, emphasis in the original).

Both viewpoints provide insight into the recent be-havior of the parties in the electorate, but neither ac-count is complete or satisfactory. The conflict displace-ment perspective s focus on the inherent tension betweenolder and newer issue agendas comports well with thesubstantive differences among the three issue agendas incontemporary domestic politics and the empirical reality that citizens attitudes toward them are distinct and, tosome extent, cross-cutting (Knoke 1979; Abramowitz1994; Shafer and Claggett 1995; Carmines and Layman

1997). Racial and social welfare issues do pose a similarphilosophical question should the government take anactive role in furthering social and economic equality among its citizens? which helps account for the rela-tionship some researchers find between attitudes onthem (Kinder and Sanders 1996). However, Democraticracial liberalism triggered mass defections from theparty s traditional base in the white South, and racialconcerns continue to divide the Democratic coalitionboth in and outside of the South (Huckfeldt and Kohfeld1989; Carmines and Layman 1998). The philosophicalquestion motivating cultural issues should the govern-ment take an active role in promoting traditional notionsof morality and social order? differs from that of theother two agendas, and it is cultural conservatives, notliberals, who favor government activism. Consequently,groups that tend to be conservative on social welfare is-sues are often liberal on cultural issues, and vice versa

(Ladd and Hadley 1975; Layman 2001).Yet, the conflict displacement outlook assumes thatthe old cleavage must be played down if the new conflictis to be exploited (Schattschneider 1960, 63). Thus, itfails to anticipate party elites polarizing on two or morecross-cutting issue dimensions, as they recently havedone. In contrast, the ideological realignment perspectiverecognizes that party elites have grown increasingly po-larized on multiple issue agendas, but, by modeling themass response as taking shape along a single liberal-con-servative continuum, it ignores the multidimensionalstructure of mass issue attitudes.

More generally, both perspectives offer over-simpli-fied accounts of the mass response to elite-level change.The traditional realignment viewpoint does not antici-pate that party elite change on issues may lead individualvoters to alter their views on issues. Instead, it typically assumes that the only individual-level response to party elite polarization is issue-based change in party identifi-cation either party identifiers switching their party al-legiances (Erikson and Tedin 1981; Sundquist 1983) orindependents choosing a party affiliation based on thenew source of partisan conflict (Andersen 1979; Clubb,Flanigan, and Zingale 1980). If citizens issue attitudesare fixed as such, then issue dimensions such as socialwelfare and culture that are initially orthogonal to(uncorrelated with) each other will remain so. Then,even if party elites grow more polarized on both dimen-sions, increased mass party polarization on one issueagenda necessarily results in decreased polarization onthe other.

We contend that such an outcome is unlikely becausethe alternative positions championed by party elites struc-ture the political choices offered to the mass public and

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thus play an important role in the development and ex-pression of citizens views. When Democratic and Repub-lican elites present distinct viewpoints on multiple issues,those issues are, to some extent, packaged together forpublic consumption. In other words, the policy positionsof the two parties help determine what goes with what in public policy debates and in the policy attitudes of citi-zens who receive political cues from party elites (Car-mines and Stimson 1989; Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991; Zaller 1992; Shafer and Claggett 1995). In recent de-cades, the choice increasingly offered to voters is one be-tween a Republican party taking consistently conservativepositions on social welfare, racial, and cultural issues anda Democratic party that is consistently liberal on all threeagendas. In this context, it is reasonable to expect somecitizens to adopt consistently liberal or consistently con-servative positions themselves.

The ideological realignment account correctly per-

ceives that elite policy positions do structure mass policy attitudes and that the growing ideological consistency of party elite stands on social welfare, racial, and cultural is-sues should lead to increases in mass attitude constraint.However, it envisions a large and uniform responseacross citizens to elite ideological polarization. In orderfor mass ideology to become defined by the single lib-eral-conservative dimension assumed by ideological re-alignment, it would be necessary for most citizens to fol-low the lead of party elites and stake out uniformly liberal or uniformly conservative positions on all threedomestic issue agendas.

Such a widespread increase in attitudinal coherenceis unlikely for a number of reasons. First, there remainclear substantive differences between the three domesticagendas, and the major sociodemographic factors associ-ated with attitudes on social welfare, racial, and culturalissuessocial class, race, and religion, respectively arethemselves cross-cutting. Second, Converse (1964) andothers show that many, if not most, citizens do not ex-hibit much consistency in their attitudes toward even is-sues within the same policy agenda, much less towarddifferent agendas. Third, the individuals who do havehighly constrained attitudes toward the issues in one di-

mension are often members of issue publics who caredeeply about a particular issue or issue agenda, but findother issues to be much less salient and thus lack coher-ent views on them (Converse 1964; Krosnick 1990). Fi-nally, and most importantly for this article, many, andperhaps most, citizens are unlikely to respond to politicalcues provided by party elites because they pay little atten-tion to elite-level politics, because they have no ties oronly weak ties to a political party, or both.

Conflict Extension and the LimitedMass Response to Elite IssueConvergence and Polarization

We argue that the growing polarization between andideological consistency of the social welfare, racial, and

cultural stands of Democratic and Republican elitesshould provoke a response in mass policy attitudes, but itshould be a limited one. For a segment of the electorate,we expect an attitudinal convergence similar to that im-plied by the ideological realignment research. However,for much, perhaps most, of the mass electorate, attitudestoward different issue agendas should remain distinctand cross-cutting.

The extent to which citizens issue attitudes reflectthe increasingly unidimensional and polarized pattern of party elites should be shaped by two key factors: thestrength of individuals party affiliations and the degreeto which they are aware of the polarization of the Demo-cratic and Republican parties on multiple issue agendas. 1

Zaller (1992) suggests that citizens are most likely to re-ceive and accept political cues from elites who share theirown political predispositions. Thus, as party elites grow more polarized on social welfare, racial, and culturalmatters, Democratic and Republican identifiers, particu-larly strong identifiers, should be more likely than politi-cal independents to bring their own attitudes on thethree agendas toward consistently liberal or consistently conservative positions.

Of course, not all party identifiers, even strong party identifiers, are likely to follow the ideological lead of party elites. Many scholars note that politically sophisti-cated citizens are most likely to structure their own pref-erences in a manner consistent with elite-level cues(Converse 1964; Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991;

1Others have made similar arguments, but we take these ideas innew theoretical and empirical directions. For example, Zaller notesthe likely connection between political awareness and attitudeconstraint (1992 ,113 114), but does not examine attitude con-straint empirically nor does he examine the link between aware-ness and partisan change on multiple issue dimensions. Nie, Verba,

and Petrocik (1976) note the role of party distinctiveness on issuesin shaping levels of mass attitude constraint, but they do not con-sider the link between either partisanship or political awarenessand attitude consistency. Carmines and Stimson (1989, chapter 5)make an argument similar to ours in terms of the bundling of racial and social welfare issues by party elites, but they do not ex-amine empirically how party identification might shape levels of mass attitude constraint. Moreover, they do not consider the pos-sibility of conflict extension across the two issue agendas and in-stead focus on conflict displacement by noting the coincidence of growing party polarization on racial issues and declining polariza-tion on social welfare.

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Sniderman 2000; Box-Steffensmeier and De Boef 2001).Zaller (1992) shows that the individuals most likely toreceive and accept elite-level cues consistent with theirpolitical predispositions are those with high levels of po-litical awareness. Zallers definition of awareness en-compasses several indicators of political sophisticationand attentiveness, but, for us, the crucial element is rec-ognition of where the parties and their candidates standrelative to each other on political issues (cf. Carmines,Renten, and Stimson 1984). The only party identifierswho should receive a clear signal from their party leadersto bring their views on cross-cutting issue agendas suchas social welfare and culture together are those who rec-ognize that the Democratic and Republican parties havestaked out distinctly liberal and conservative positions,respectively, on each set of issues.

In sum, the only citizens we expect to respond to thedevelopments observed among party elites by bringing

their own views on different issue dimensions closer to-gether are party identifiers, particularly strong partisans,who are aware of party polarization on all of those di-mensions. The aggregate consequence of this limited in-dividual-level response should be conflict extension: agrowth in mass party polarization on multiple distinctissue dimensions. Because many, if not most, citizens arenot likely to respond to the changing elite cues, theelectorate s attitudes toward the different policy agendasshould remain distinct in the aggregate. However, themovement of politically-aware Democrats and Republi-cans toward the uniformly liberal and conservative social

welfare, racial, and cultural stands of their parties elitesshould lead to a stronger aggregate relationship betweenthe three dimensions of policy attitudes, thereby pushingthe aggregate views of the parties in the electorate towardmore polarized positions on each issue dimension.

Mass Awareness, Dimensionality,and Partisan Change:

The Aggregate-Level Evidence

In this section, we display several aggregate patterns thatare more compatible with our conflict extension per-spective than with the conflict displacement or ideologi-cal realignment arguments. The growth in party elite po-larization of course has not been monotonic. It hasinstead occurred in fits and starts, with the level of polar-ization varying with changes in party leadership, theelectoral cycle, and the varied campaign strategies andagendas of particular party candidates. Because citizens

respond to both long-term political patterns and short-term fluctuations in elite debate (Nie, Verba, andPetrocik 1976; Zaller 1992), the aggregate patterns we re-port exhibit some fluctuation around the general trend.However, that trend is one of growing mass awareness of party elite polarization and growing mass party polariza-tion on multiple, distinct issue dimensions.

Awareness of issue differences between the partiesdepends not just on the attentiveness and cognitive abili-ties of individual citizens, but also on the degree of polar-ization between party elites (Hetherington 2001). So, asthe parties elites grow more polarized on social welfare,racial, and cultural issues, the proportion of the elector-ate that understands that the Republican party is moreconservative than the Democratic party on all threepolicy dimensions should increase. Table 1 shows thatthis has occurred on three social welfare issues (govern-ment guarantee of jobs and a good standard of living,

government services and spending, and government pro-vision of health insurance), 2 one racial issue (govern-ment responsibility to help African-Americans), and twocultural issues (women s role in society and abortion) onwhich respondents to the 1972 through 2000 NationalElection Studies (NES) were asked to place the positionsof the two parties. 3

Despite some short-term fluctuation, a clear trendemerges: on every issue except abortion, the percentageof the electorate and particularly of party identifiers recognizing that the GOP is more conservative than theDemocratic party was higher in 1996 than at any other

point in the time series.4

That was true in 1992 for

2Awareness of party differences is measured as follows. First, theonly observations treated as missing are those respondents whowere not asked one or both questions (placement of Democrats,placement of Republicans) on the particular issue. Second, the re-spondents coded as placing the two parties correctly on the issueare those who placed the Republicans as more conservative thanthe Democrats. All other respondents are coded as not placing theparties correctly on the issue.3The 2000 NES interviewed roughly half (1,006) of its respondentsin person and roughly half (801) of its respondents over thephone. Since the 1972 study, the NES has measured respondents attitudes and their perceptions of party and candidate positions on

many issues (including all of the issues in Table 1 except abortion)by asking them to place themselves, the two parties, and candidateson seven-point scales. The face-to-face interviews in 2000 used thetraditional seven-point scale format, but the phone interviewsused a branching format resulting in issue scales with only five cat-egories. To maintain continuity with the NES surveys from 1972through 1996, our analysis includes only the face-to-face respon-dents in 2000.4In 1992, 1996, and 2000, there were some instances in which theNES did not ask respondents to place the two parties on the issuescales, but did ask them to place the major-party presidential

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TABLE 1 Awareness of the Republican Party Being More Conservative than the Democratic Partyon Specific Issues, 19722000 (in percentages)

Issue and Group 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000

Government Guarantee of JobsAll Respondents 52 54 57 57 52 59 68 59Strong Partisans 63 69 61 68 64 68 81 75

Weak/Leaning Partisans 51 53 59 57 52 59 64 56Independents 32 29 42 31 22 40 39 36

Government Services and SpendingAll Respondents 54 67 57 64 73 73Strong Partisans 63 78 69 72 85 84Weak/Leaning Partisans 56 68 56 64 71 74Independents 28 42 25 47 44 38

Government Help for BlacksAll Respondents 41 42 62 55 46 63 56Strong Partisans 44 53 64 62 60 75 72Weak/Leaning Partisans 44 42 66 56 46 60 55Independents 26 24 42 34 15 41 24

Government Health Insurance

All Respondents 35 46 51 68Strong Partisans 41 58 63 76Weak/Leaning Partisans 36 46 50 67Independents 21 27 20 49

Women s RightsAll Respondents 20 23 43 33 52 33Strong Partisans 23 27 45 40 57 38Weak/Leaning Partisans 20 23 45 34 53 33Independents 13 14 34 12 33 16

Abortiona

All Respondents 13 24 60 58 48Strong Partisans 15 25 65 66 55Weak/Leaning Partisans 14 25 60 57 47

Independents 8 15 48 35 33Source: 1972 2000 National Election StudiesNote: Entries are the percentage of respondents who placed both parties on the particular issue and who placed the Republicans to the right of theDemocrats. Percentages in italics are based on placements of candidates when respondents were not asked to place the parties.aIn 1976, respondents were asked to identify the party more likely to support a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, rather than to place thetwo parties on the NES abortion scale.

candidates on those scales. When that is the case, we show, in ital-ics, the percentage of respondents placing the Republican candi-date to the right of the Democratic candidate on the issue. Basedon an analysis of the twenty-eight instances from 1972 through2000 in which the NES asked respondents to place both the twoparties and their presidential candidates on the same issue, we areconfident that the candidate-based measures produce estimates of awareness of party differences that are very similar to those thatwould be produced by party-based measures. The average correla-tion between the party-based measure and the candidate-basedmeasure of awareness over those twenty-eight cases is .64 and the

average correlation for 1992 through 2000, the years where we haveto turn to candidate-based measures, is .66. The difference betweenthe percentage of respondents placing parties and candidates cor-rectly was small (an average of four percentage points) and not atall systematic in direction. In the twenty-eight cases, there werethirteen instances in which a higher percentage of respondentsprovided a correct relative placement of candidates than a correctrelative placement of parties, fourteen instances in which more re-spondents correctly placed the parties than correctly placed thecandidates, and one instance in which the exact same percentage of respondents correctly placed the parties and candidates.

abortion, and the percentage of the electorate realizingthat the Republicans are more opposed than the Demo-crats to abortion rights was only slightly lower in 1996than in 1992. These percentages declined somewhat in2000, perhaps due to George W. Bush s efforts to portray

a more moderate image of the Republican party, or to AlGores reputation as a leader of Democratic centrism, orto both. However, the electorate was more aware of party differences and their direction in 2000 than it was in the1970s on every issue and in the 1980s on most issues.

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This growth in awareness of party differences onmultiple issue agendas should increase the proportion of party identifiers who move their own views toward theuniformly liberal or conservative stands of party elites.However, because the response should be limited toaware party identifiers, we should still observe a multidi-mensional issue space, but with a growing level of massparty polarization on those dimensions. 5 To test this hy-pothesis, we first assess whether attitudes on racial, cul-tural, and social welfare issues form separate dimensionsor combine to produce a single issue dimension and if the dimensionality of mass issue attitudes has changedover time. To that end, we conduct confirmatory factoranalyses of all of the racial, social welfare, and cultural is-sues in all of the presidential-year NES surveys that con-tained questions about all three policy agendas: thosefrom 1972 to 2000. 6

We estimated three different measurement models

in each year: one with all of the issues loading on a singlelatent variable, one with all of the social welfare and ra-cial issues loading on a single dimension and the culturalissues forming a separate dimension, and one with racial,social welfare, and cultural issues all loading on separate

latent variables. 7 To address the question of dimensional-ity, we turn to the chi-square difference test, which is thedifference between the chi-square test of overall fit for amodel with more latent factors and that for a model withfewer latent factors. This difference itself follows the chi-square distribution with degrees of freedom equal to thedifference in the degrees of freedom between the moreand less restricted models and indicates whether themodel with more factors explains a significantly largerproportion of the variance in the observed indicatorsthan does the model with fewer factors (Kline 1998). Inthe interests of space, we present, in Table 2, the full re-sults of these analyses only for 1972 and 2000.

In both years, a three-factor solution captures do-mestic issue attitudes better than does a one- or two-fac-tor solution. The indicators of attitudes on cultural issueslike abortion and women s rights load much morestrongly on their own factor than they do on a single fac-

tor with racial and social welfare attitudes. In 1972, thestandardized loadings for social welfare attitudes are alsostronger on a separate factor than in the single-factormodel. In 2000, both social welfare and racial attitudesload somewhat more strongly on their own separate fac-tors than they do on a single factor. Most importantly,the chi-square tests of the difference in the goodness of fit between the three-factor solution and both the one-and two-factor solutions reach very high levels of statisti-cal significance (p

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TABLE 2 Confirmatory Factor Analyses of Issue Attitudes, 1972 and 2000

One Factor Three Factors

Issues All Issues Racial Social Welfare Cultural

1972 Govt. help for blacks 1.29 (.61) 1.00 (.61)Pace of civil rights 1.16 (.56) .90 (.56)Busing to integrate schools .98 (.55) .76 (.54)Racial equality in jobs 1.99 (.63) 1.59 (.64)School integration 2.04 (.64) 1.63 (.65)Integration of accommodations 1.51 (.52) 1.19 (.53)Government ensure jobs 1.00 (.46) 1.00 (.69)Government health insurance .96 (.37) .81 (.47)Changes in tax rates .49 (.20) .43 (.26)Legality of abortion .37 (.16) 1.00 (.51)Women s Rights .63 (.26) .83 (.41)Legalize Marijuana .79 (.34) 1.39 (.71) 2 (df) 942.74 (54) 426.85 (51) 2difference (one factor) (df) 515.89 (3) 2difference (two factor) (df) 77.58 (2)

2000 Govt. help for blacks 1.17 (.58) 1.00 (.65)Racial equality in jobs 1.91 (.58) 1.59 (.64)Affirmative action programs 1.59 (.50) 1.30 (.54)Racial preferences in hiring 1.25 (.52) 1.09 (.59)Spending on programs for blacks 1.53 (.66) 1.32 (.74)Spending on child care 1.08 (.48) 1.14 (.52)Spending for social security .65 (.32) .74 (.37)Government health insurance .83 (.37) .88 (.41)Government services and spending .98 (.52) 1.04 (.57)Government ensure jobs 1.00 (.48) 1.00 (.50)Spending to help the poor 1.37 (.60) 1.45 (.66)Spending for food stamps 1.30 (.55) 1.31 (.57)Women s rights .20 (.11) .51 (.43)Legality of abortion .19 (.07)* 1.00 (.57)Parental consent for abortion .21 (.08) .61 (.38)Partial birth abortion ban .35 (.12) .53 (.30)Homosexual discrimination laws .99 (.35) .78 (.45)Homosexuals in military .40 (.14) 1.01 (.59)Homosexuals adopt children .75 (.21) 1.53 (.70) 2 (df) 1665.33 (170) 766.32 (167) 2difference (one factor) (df) 899.01 (3) 2difference (two factor) (df) 223.13 (2)

Source: 1972 and 2000 National Election StudiesNote: Entries are unstandardized factor loadings. The standardized loadings are in parentheses. The number of observations is 2,705 in 1972 and 1,006in 2000.aAnalyses computed using full information maximum likelihood estimation with missing values

*p>.05; all other factor loadings/correlations are significant at p

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variables indicate the difference between the mean forRepublicans and that of independents and the mean forDemocrats and that of independents. Figure 1 presents

the estimated means for Democratic and Republicanidentifiers and the differences between the two party coa-litions from 1972 to 2000. 10

Contrary to the prediction of conflict displacement,increases in party polarization on newer agendas such asracial and cultural issues have not resulted in partisan de-

polarization on older social welfare issues. Instead, on allthree issue dimensions, the levels of mass party polariza-tion that existed in 1972 were either equally as large ormore substantial in 2000.

F IGURE 1 Title

A U / E D : P l e a s e p r o v i d e

c o m p l e t e a r t / l a b e l s / t i t l e .

10In order to assign a scale to each latent variable, the intercept of the latent variable is set to zero. Thus, the mean value on each la-tent variable for independents is zero and the predicted mean val-ues for Republicans and Democrats in each year are simply the es-timated difference between their mean positions and those of independents (zero). The difference between the Democraticmean and the independent mean is statistically significant (p

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Not surprisingly, the largest growth in party polar-ization was on the newest agenda, cultural issues. Muchlike their party platforms and government officials, Re-publican and Democratic identifiers did not differ muchon cultural issues in the 1970s. Partisan differences in-creased sharply in 1980 with the Republican nominationof the culturally-conservative Ronald Reagan. The cul-tural cleavage temporarily narrowed in 1988, but as theChristian Right became increasingly influential withinthe Republican party and religious liberals and secularindividuals responded with a countermobilization intothe Democratic party (Layman 2001), party polarizationon cultural issues increased sharply after 1988.

Carmines and Stimson (1989) point to a criticalmoment in the racial series between 1960 and 1964. Re-publicans became clearly more conservative than Demo-crats, and those differences increased gradually throughthe 1960s and early 1970s. Accordingly, we find clear par-

tisan differences on racial issues in 1972. But, what ismost interesting is that the mid-1970s, the very point atwhich Carmines and Stimson s analysis ends, marked thebeginning of another period of growth in partisan racialpolarization. Party differences increased sharply between1972 and 1984 and then increased gradually over the restof the 1980s and the 1990s.

As we would expect, the parties coalitions were al-ready divided on social welfare issues in 1972. But, thatpartisan division did not decrease even as polarizationincreased on the racial and cultural dimensions. Rather,party polarization on social welfare actually grew

through the 1980s and 1990s. In keeping with the elec-tions of 1980 and 1994 signaling rightward turns in theeconomic and social welfare views of the GOP, most of the increase resulted from the growing conservatism of Republicans.

While there is some year-to-year volatility in the levelof mass party polarization, it is clear that the level of party polarization on all three issue agendas has increased overthe past thirty years. Party polarization was greater in1996 than it had been at any point in the previous twenty-five years, and even in 2000, party polarization was greaterthan it was in 1972 on all three agendas. 11

Testing the Explanation forMass Conflict Extension

We contend that conflict extension has occurred insteadof conflict displacement because citizens have respondedto growing consistency in the social welfare, racial, and

cultural stands of party elites by adopting more consis-tent stands themselves. Conflict extension has occurredinstead of a more complete ideological realignment be-cause only some citizens, party identifiers who are awareof party differences on the various issue agendas, arelikely to have brought their social welfare, racial, and cul-tural attitudes toward the uniformly liberal or conserva-tive stands of party elites. In this section, we evaluate thisindividual-level explanation for conflict extension.

Unfortunately, changes in question wording and,more importantly, in the specific issues about which NESsurveys have asked make comparisons of the relationship

between issue attitudes over the full 1972 2000 time pe-riod very difficult. To ensure that observed changes in at-titude constraint are not due to changes in questionwording or the content of particular agendas, it is neces-sary to examine attitudes on the same issues, measured inthe same way, over time. So, in Table 3, we examine therelationship between attitudes on the eleven social wel-fare, racial, and cultural issues that were common to allof the presidential-year NES surveys from 1988 through2000 for three categories of citizens: individuals whoidentify strongly with the Democratic or Republican par-ties, weak identifiers and independents who say they leantoward one of the two parties, and independents who donot lean toward either party ( pure independents). 12 Weshow the loadings of all of these issues on a single factorand the average standardized loading of all issues on that

11To test whether the over-time increases in levels of party polar-ization on the three issue dimensions we reported are statistically significant, we constrained the levels of polarization in 1996 and2000 to equal the level of polarization in 1972 and computed thechi-square difference test for the goodness of fit of constrained andunconstrained models for 1996 and 2000. Specifically, we con-strained the coefficients on the Democratic and Republicandummy variables included in the confirmatory models that pro-duced the estimates of polarization illustrated in Figure 1 to be thesame distance apart from each other in 1996 and 2000 as they werefound to be in 1972. The differences in the chi-square statistics forthe constrained and unconstrained models for both 1996 and 2000

were statistically significant, indicating that mass party preferenceswere significantly more polarized in 1996 and in 2000 than they were in 1972.12Beginning the analysis in 1988 is appropriate for several reasons.First, Figure 1 indicates that the years from 1988 through 1996 evi-denced increasing party polarization on all three issue dimensionssimultaneously, thus providing a clear example of conflict exten-sion. Second, the number of issue questions common to all years

becomes quite small if we begin the analysis before 1988. Third, if we begin the analysis before 1988, there is only one racial issue,government help for blacks, that is common to all years, making itimpossible to estimate a separate factor for racial attitudes. As acheck, we examined the correlations between pairs of issue dimen-sions for the three-factor model applied to the 1972 through 2000NES studies using the same models which produced the resultspresented in Table 2, broken down by strength of partisanship. De-spite differences in the questions asked from year to year, in every year the correlations between issue dimensions for strong parti-sans was higher than for pure independents, with the correlationsamong issue dimensions for weak and leaning partisans almost al-ways falling in between.

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TABLE 3 Factor Analysis by Strength of Party Identification, 1988 2000: Loadings of the Same 11 Issueson a Single Factor and Factor Correlations from Three-Factor Models of the Same Issues

Partisan Group and Issue 1988 1992 1996 2000

Strong Partisans Spending for food stamps .81 (.53) .85 (.52) .85 (.59) 1.05 (.60)Spending for social security .20 (.22) .44 (.32) .61 (.47) .57 (.41)

Government health insurance .82 (.57) .96 (.60) .91 (.66) .80 (.50)Government services/spending .63 (.55) .77 (.58) .78 (.67) .84 (.62)Government ensure jobs 1.00 (.73) 1.00 (.68) 1.00 (.77) 1.00 (.65)Abortion .01 (.01)* .26 (.14) .38 (.23) .29 (.14)Women s rights .17 (.13) .28 (.20) .37 (.30) .07 (.05)*Homosexual discrimination laws .51 (.30) .80 (.40) .84 (.48) .93 (.44)Racial equality in jobs 1.05 (.52) 1.17 (.51) .76 (.56) 1.49 (.63)Racial preferences in hiring .82 (.53) .84 (.45) .88 (.55) 1.13 (.58)Government help forblacks .94 (.70) 1.01 (.68) .81 (.67) .95 (.64)(N) (634) (719) (543) (302)Average standardized loading .43 .47 .54 .48Average loading of cultural issues .14 .25 .34 .223-factor: r SW & cult. /rracial & cult. /rSW & racial .16/.22/.81 .46/.43/.80 .60/.55/.83 .30/.24/.81

Weak and Leaning Partisans Spending for food stamps 1.19 (.54) .81 (.44) .88 (.49) .60 (.31)Spending for social security .13 (.09) .42 (.26) .42 (.26) .42 (.23)Government health insurance .84 (.42) .75 (.44) .73 (.45) .76 (.40)Government services/spending .72 (.46) .70 (.50) .72 (.55) .80 (.50)Government ensure jobs 1.00 (.56) 1.00 (.62) 1.00 (.67) 1.00 (.59)Abortion .01 (.01)* .18 (.09) .23 (.11) .14 (.06)*Women s rights .22 (.12) .33 (.21) .27 (.19) .24 (.15)Homosexual discrimination laws .56 (.23) .76 (.34) .91 (.41) .79 (.33)Racial equality in jobs 1.41 (.47) 1.36 (.49) .79 (.47) 1.68 (.60)Racial preferences in hiring .98 (.46) .66 (.36) .84 (.48) .78 (.42)Government help forblacks 1.19 (.65) .88 (.57) .92 (.65) .99 (.61)(N) (1150) (1438) (1007) (302)Average standardized loading .36 .39 .43 .36Average loading of cultural issues .12 .21 .24 .183-factor: r SW & cult. /rracial & cult. /rSW & racial .13/.18/.76 .32/.30/.64 .37/.41/.70 .36/.31/.65

Pure Independents Spending for food stamps .96 (.50) .94 (.50) .54 (.40) 3.23 (.62)*Spending for social security .23 (.24) .43 (.27) .37 (.29) .89 (.21)*Government health insurance .89 (.51) .49 (.29) .35 (.28) .81 (.18)*Government services/spending .67 (.48) .68 (.48) .49 (.52) 1.03 (.28)*Government ensure jobs 1.00 (.61) 1.00 (.59) 1.00 (.84) 1.00 (.22)Abortion .38 ( .20) .28 ( .13)* .27 (.17)* .31 (.05)*Women s rights .17 (.11)* .03 (.02)* .01 (.01)* .04 (.01)*Homosexual discrimination laws .25 (.12)* .20 (.09)* .46 (.28) 1.82 (.34)*Racial equality in jobs 1.23 (.48) 1.42 (.51) .39 (.36) 3.43 (.49)*Racial preferences in hiring .78 (.44) .79 (.42) .28 (.21)* 1.31 (.28)*Government help for blacks .82 (.50) .94 (.56) .70 (.60) 1.28 (.28)*(N) (215) (287) (145) (107)

Average standardized loading .34 .33 .35 .26Average loading of cultural issues .01 -.01 .03 .103-factor: r SW & cult. /rracial & cult. /rSW & racial .01*/.01*/.53 .01*/ .01*/.6l .09*/.16*/.74 .11*/.17*/.68

Source: 1988 2000 National Election StudiesNote: Entries are unstandardized factor loadings. Standardized loadings are in parentheses.*Not significant at p

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factor. 13 Because cultural issues tend to load most weakly on a single factor, we also show the average standardizedloading of all cultural attitudes. Finally, we show the cor-relations between latent issue attitudes in the three-factormodel and the estimated level of party polarization onthe three latent factors in each year. 14

The results show that attitude constraint on theseeleven issues increased between 1988 and 1996 for strongparty identifiers. The average loading of all issues on asingle factor increased from .43 to .54 and the averageloading of cultural issues more than doubled from .14 to.34. The correlation in three-factor models between la-tent cultural attitudes and latent social welfare attitudesnearly quadrupled between 1988 and 1996, and the cor-relation between the racial and cultural factors increasedfrom .22 to .55. An increase in constraint is also evidentfor weak and leaning partisans, with both the loadings ona single factor and correlations between the cultural fac-

tor and the social welfare and racial factors growingstronger. However, these increases are less dramatic thanthey are for strong partisans. The relationships betweenthe cultural, racial, and social welfare attitudes of party identifiers grew weaker between 1996 and 2000. How-ever, those relationships were generally stronger in 2000than they were in 1988.

Importantly, there is no evidence of growth in attitu-dinal constraint among pure independents over time.The average loading of all issues on a single factor waslower in 2000 than it was in 1988, and the loadings of cultural issues display no pattern of growth. In fact, the

correlation between the cultural factor and the socialwelfare and racial factors in a three-factor solution is sta-tistically insignificant in each year.

An alternative hypothesis to ours is that the patternsin Table 3 are due to the mobilization and demobiliza-tion of individuals into and out of the parties in the elec-torate rather than increased attitudinal convergenceamong individual party identifiers. The individuals mostlikely to come into and/or stay in parties may be thoseshare the consistently liberal or conservative views of

party elites on all three major issue agendas, while indi-viduals who do not have uniformly liberal or conserva-tive views on the three agendas are more likely to becomeindependents. This is most likely occurring to some de-gree, but the question is whether the growth in attitudeconstraint among party identifiers is due solely to mobi-lization/demobilization or is at least partly due to attitu-dinal convergence among individual partisans. To answerthat, we turn to panel data from the 1992, 1994, and 1996NES surveys and compare the levels of attitude con-straint across the three panel waves of individuals whoidentified with the same party in each wave to those whowere independents in each wave. Table 4 shows the load-ings of attitudes toward the five social welfare and threecultural issues that were in each panel wave for both par-tisan groups. 15 It also shows the average standardizedloadings of all issues and of cultural issues on that factor,as well as the correlations between the social welfare and

cultural factors from two-factor models.Even over a short four-year period, there is clear evi-dence of individual party identifiers merging their atti-tudes on social welfare and cultural issues. The averageloading of all issues and of cultural issues on a single fac-tor increased noticeably between 1992 and 1996, particu-larly for attitudes on abortion and women s rights. Thecorrelation between social welfare and cultural attitudesin a two-factor model nearly doubled for partisans overthis period. In contrast, there is no evidence of increasedattitudinal constraint among independents. The averageloadings, either of all issues or of cultural issues, on a

single factor did not increase at all, and the correlationbetween the social welfare and cultural factors was smallerin 1996 than in 1992 for independents. The level of attitu-dinal constraint among independents is also lower than itis for partisans in all three waves of the panel.

Together, the results in Tables 3 and 4 confirm thatthe individuals who are most likely to take cues fromparty leaders party identifiers, particularly strong par-tisanshave followed their lead by growing more consis-tently conservative or more consistently liberal in theirattitudes toward the major domestic issue agendas. Asexpected, citizens without attachments to the parties

have lower levels of attitudinal constraint and have notdisplayed any increase in attitudinal constraint acrossdistinct issue dimensions.

13To provide a scale for this single latent variable, we set the factorloading of observed attitudes toward government responsibility toensure jobs to one in each analysis.14We also estimated one- and three-factor models for the attitudesof all respondents on these eleven issues, and found a growth in at-titude constraint between 1988 and 1996. The average loading of all issues and of cultural issues on a single factor increased consid-erably, as did the correlations between the cultural factor and theother two factors in the three-factor model. There was also a clearincrease in par ty polarization, estimated in the same way as in Fig-ure 1, on social welfare, racial, and cultural issues. Levels of atti-tude constraint and party polarization were lower in 2000 than in1996, but remained higher than in 1988.

15We do not include racial issues in this analysis because therewere only two racial issues that were in each of the three panelwaves and because the very small sample size for independents cre-ated difficulties for estimating a three-factor model. However, in-cluding racial issues in the analysis for partisans, or in the single-factor models for independents, does not alter the results shownhere.

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We contend that the catalyst for growing attitudeconstraint among party identifiers is increased awarenessof party elite differences on various issue dimensions. If that is true, then the relationship between attitudes to-ward distinct issue dimensions such as social welfare andculture should be stronger among partisans who areaware of party differences on both dimensions thanamong partisans who are not aware of these differences.To test this, we use data pooled from the 1992, 1996, and2000 NES, and measure awareness of party issue differ-ences using the three issues on which all three studiesasked respondents to place the parties and/or the presi-dential candidates. 16 We combined the indicators of

awareness of party/candidate differences on governmentguarantee of jobs and government services and spendingto create a measure of awareness of party differences onsocial welfare issues.17 Awareness of party differences oncultural issues is defined as identifying the Republicanparty/candidate as more pro-life on abortion than theDemocratic party/candidate. For each partisan group, weconducted factor analyses of the eight social welfare andcultural issues examined in Table 3 for individuals whowere aware that the Republicans were more conservativethan the Democrats on neither issue, on only one of the

TABLE 4 Factor Analysis of Same Eight Social Welfare and Cultural Issuesfor Partisans and Independents in the 1992 19941996 Panel

Partisan Group and Issue 1992 1994 1996

Partisans a

Government ensure jobs 1.00 (.61) 1.00 (.69) 1.00 (.70)Government services/spending 1.14 (.59) 1.32 (.80) 1.09 (.70)

Government health insurance .89 (.62) .86 (.63) .88 (.72)Spending for food stamps 1.08 (.55) .86 (.54) .80 (.49)Spending for social security .70 (.39) .53 (.35) .53 (.35)Abortion .42 (.20) .48 (.25) .49 (.27)Women s rights .31 (.18) .44 (.30) .50 (.34)School prayer .09 (.05)* .16 (.12)* .07 (.07)*(N) (258) (258) (258)Average standardized loading .40 .46 .46Average loading of cultural issues .14 .23 .232-factor: r social welfare & cultural .22 .40 .41

Independents b

Government ensure jobs 1.00 (.52) 1.00 (.55) 1.00 (.61)Government services/spending .98 (.65) 1.26 (.75) .88 (.55)Government health insurance 1.12 (.62) 1.23 (.64) 1.02 (.58)Spending for food stamps .88 (.41) .65 (.32) 1.08 (.47)Spending for social security .66 (.35) .70 (.39) 1.06 (.54)Abortion .22 (.09)* .24 (.11)* .13 (.06)*Women s rights .39 (.25)* .32 (.18)* .43 (.22)*School prayer .11 (.07)* .15 (.09)* .09 ( .06)*(N) (110) (110) (110)Average standardized loading .35 .37 .37Average loading of cultural issues .09 .12 .072-factor: r social welfare & cultural .09* .17* .05*

Source: 1992 1994 1996 National Election Studies Panel Note: Entries are unstandardized factor loadings. Standardized loadings are in parentheses.aPanel respondents who identified themselves as Democrats (strong or weak) in 1992, 1994, and 1996 and respondents who identified themselves asRepublicans (strong or weak) in 1992, 1994, and 1996

bPanel respondents who identified themselves as independents (leaning or non-leaning) in 1992, 1994, and 1996*Not significant at p

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TABLE 5 Results of Factor Analysis of the Same Eight Social Welfare and Cultural Issues By Strength ofParty Identification and Awareness of Partisan Differences on Social Welfare and Cultural Issues

Awareness of Party Differences on Social Welfare and Cultural Issues

Aware on NeitherPartisan Group and Issue Agenda Aware on One Only Aware on Both

Strong Partisans Abortion .42 ( .25) .36 ( .18) .88 (.55)Women s rights .17 (.12)* .03 ( .02)* .46 (.43)Homosexual discrimination laws .34 (.19)* .55 (.27) 1.13 (.63)Spending for social security .27 (.25) .68 (.49) .53 (.41)Government health insurance .58 (.39) .90 (.55) 1.00 (.72)Government services/spending .12 (.10)* .70 (.66) .99 (.82)Government ensure jobs 1.00 (.72) 1.00 (.66) 1.00 (.79)Spending for food stamps .38 (.25) .89 (.52) .88 (.60)(N) (217) (366) (635)Average standardized loading .22 .34 .63Average loading of cultural issues .02 .02 .542-factor model: r social welfare and cultural .18 .11 .77

Weak and Leaning Partisans Abortion .06 ( .02)* .14 ( .04)* .67 (.35)Women s rights .10 (.06)* .08 (.04)* .51 (.39)Homosexual discrimination laws .51 (.20) .68 (.20) 1.07 (.50)Spending for social security .60 (.37) 1.04 (.42) .54 (.34)Government health insurance .83 (.42) 1.16 (.44) 1.00 (.63)Government services/spending .60 (.40) 1.07 (.51) 1.01 (.79)Government ensure jobs 1.00 (.55) 1.00 (.43) 1.00 (.70)Spending for food stamps .80 (.38) .82 (.30) .87 (.47)(N) (603) (791) (894)Average standardized loading .29 .29 .52Average loading of cultural issues .07 .07 .412-factor model: r social welfare and cultural .09* .10* .58

Pure Independents Abortion .14 (.06)* .03 ( .01)* .02 (.01)*Women s rights .06 ( .04)* .08 (.04)* .07 (.05)*Homosexual discrimination laws .21 (.09)* .87 (.30) .19 (.10)*Spending for social security .59 (.36) 1.12 (.49) .10 (.07)*Government health insurance 1.07 (.55) 1.09 (.52) .17 (.11)*Government services/spending .62 (.43) 1.37 (.73) .60 (.57)Government ensure jobs 1.00 (.56) 1.00 (.46) 1.00 (.68)Spending for food stamps .74 (.37) .60 (.25)* .82 (.45)(N) (152) (107) (83)Average standardized loading .30 .34 .26Average loading of cultural issues .04 .11 .052-factor model: r social welfare and cultural .02* .05* .01*

Source: 1992, 1996, and 2000 National Election Studies (pooled)Note: Entries are unstandardized factor loadings. Standardized loadings are in parentheses. In both the one-factor and two-factor models, each ob-served indicator is a function of a latent variable, a random measurement error, and dummy variables for 1996 and 2000 respondents. The effect ofthe year dummy variables is not shown.*Not significant at p

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count for the possibility that the intercept (mean value) for eachobserved indicator may vary across the three years, we includeddummy variables for 1996 and 2000 respondents in our model.Each observed indicator is a function of a latent variable, a randommeasurement error, and the dummies for 1996 and 2000.

The impact of awareness is quite marked for strongpartisans. As expected, it is only when strong partisansare aware of party polarization on both social welfareand cultural issues that their attitudes toward these di-mensions come closely together. As we move from strongpartisans who are not aware of party differences on ei-ther social welfare or cultural issues to strong partisanswho are aware of party differences on just one agenda,overall constraint increases slightly (the average loadingof all issues on a single factor increases from .22 to .34).However, the loadings of cultural attitudes on a singlefactor and the correlation between the factors in a two-factor model reveal no increase in the relationship be-tween social welfare and cultural attitudes. In contrast,when we move to strong partisans who are aware of party differences on both social welfare and cultural con-cerns, issue attitudes become nearly unidimensional. Theaverage loading of all issues increases markedly, the aver-

age loading of cultural issues increases enormously, andthe formerly weakly negative correlation between the so-cial welfare and cultural factors is now a positive .77.

A similar pattern exists among weak and leaningpartisans. The relationship between social welfare andcultural attitudes within the groups that are aware of party differences on neither issue agenda or on only oneagenda is very weak. It is only among those weak andleaning partisans who are aware of party differences onboth agendas that attitudes toward social welfare andcultural issues really come together.

These findings suggest that it is not simply political

sophistication or general political awareness that leadsparty identifiers to respond in kind to the growing unidi-mensionality and polarization of party elites. Individualswho are aware of party differences on one agenda aremore aware of the political environment than individualswho are aware of differences on neither agenda, but they are no more likely to merge their social welfare and cul-tural attitudes together. We argued that the most appar-ent reason why partisans would bring their own views onseemingly cross-cutting issue dimensions like cultureand social welfare together is an awareness that the par-ties have taken polarized stands on both agendas, and the

results show that it is only when that condition holds thatattitudes toward the two agendas converge.

As we expected, awareness that the parties are polar-ized on social welfare and cultural issues produces no in-crease in attitudinal constraint among pure independents.The average loading of both all issues and cultural issues

is no greater for independents who are aware of partisandifferences on both social welfare and cultural issues thanfor independents who are aware of party differences onneither issue agenda. The correlation between social wel-fare and cultural attitudes in the two-factor model is notstatistically significant for any group of independents.

Conclusion

We have argued that neither the traditional conflict dis-placement view of mass partisan change nor the morerecent work on mass ideological realignment providesa satisfactory explanation of how the electorate shouldreact to increasingly unidimensional and ideologically polarized party elites. The alternative we have offered isan account of conflict extension, in which the mass re-

sponse to recent elite-level developments should be lim-ited to party identifiers, particularly strong partisans,who are aware of party polarization on each separate is-sue agenda. In the aggregate, this limited mass responseshould produce conflict extension, with the parties in theelectorate growing more polarized on social welfare, ra-cial, and cultural issues, but with attitudes toward allthree agendas remaining distinct. The aggregate- and in-dividual-level evidence we presented supports our view.

Our findings challenge the conventional wisdom thatmass partisan change is driven by a single issue dimensionand characterized by conflict displacement. An important

question is if the conflict displacement perspective onceaccurately described the partisan change process, why does it no longer seem to do so? Our account of contem-porary electoral developments points toward an answer:the extent to which mass partisan change is characterizedby conflict extension as opposed to conflict displacementdepends heavily on the structure of ideological conflictbetween party elites. If party elites polarize along one ma- jor issue dimension and take centrist or heterogeneouspositions on other dimensions, then the parties in theelectorate will not receive cues that their own views ondifferent agendas should be consistent. In such circum-

stances, we would not expect mass ideology to be polar-ized on multiple agendas nor would we expect attitudeson multiple issue dimensions to converge toward a singleliberal-conservative dimension, even among the mostaware strong partisans. However, if Democratic and Re-publican elites take positions on multiple issue dimen-sions that are consistently liberal and consistently conser-vative, respectively, then politically-aware party identifierswill receive cues that their views on different issue agendasshould go together and they should move toward polar-ized stands on each of those dimensions.

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Part of the reason that the conflict displacement the-sis has prevailed may be the common view in the realign-ment literature that party leaders have incentives to keepthe focus of political conflict on one particular issue di-mension (Schattschneider 1960; Sundquist 1983). Dur-ing a period of stable alignment, majority party eliteswant to focus partisan debate on the issues that createdthe alignment that made them the majority (Riker 1982).Some work suggests that minority party elites have in-centives to introduce cross-cutting issue dimensions inan effort to disrupt the alignment (Riker 1982; Carminesand Stimson 1989), but minority party leaders also ac-crue benefits from the existing alignment they hold po-litical office and they hold the balance of power withintheir own party and they may not wish to upset it by taking the focus off the dominant issues (Carmines1991). In fact, Sundquist (1983) contends that the initialreaction of both parties leaders to a new issue agenda is

to straddle and suppress it. Of course, during a period of party realignment, such efforts fail and new issues are in-troduced onto the agenda. But, realignments also involvesome replacement in the leadership of both parties(Sundquist 1983), and the elites who were brought topower by the new issue dimension may wish to focus po-litical conflict only on it and avoid continued party po-larization on the old dimension. If party elites do wish tolimit partisan conflict to one issue dimension at a time,and if they are successful in that goal, then periods of change in the partisan issue agenda should be associatedwith conflict displacement.

Of course, party leaders never have been able to exertenough control over the agenda of political conflict tolimit it to a single issue dimension indefinitely (Riker1982), but they may have been much better able to con-trol the agenda in the past than they are now. Before theDemocratic party s reforms in the late 1960s and early 1970s created a participatory nominating process at thenational level, party leaders exercised considerable influ-ence over candidate nominations and the drafting of party platforms, and thus over the parties issue agendas.With a nominating process now dominated by primariesand caucuses, however, party leaders have much less con-

trol over the agenda. Groups of political activists, eachchampioning different issue agendas, have greater accessto party politics and can exert substantial pressure onparty candidates, office-holders, and platforms to takeextreme stands on these multiple agendas in order topiece together a winning electoral coalition. 20 When

party elites are unable to limit partisan conflict to asingle, dominant issue dimension and are pressured totake consistently liberal or conservative positions on nu-merous issue agendas, this signals to party identifiers thatthey should do so as well. Thus, conflict extension, ratherthan conflict displacement, should occur.

The conflict extension perspective on partisan changemay be more compatible with contemporary theories of electoral politics and candidate strategy than either theideological realignment or conflict displacement view-points. Spatial theories that rest on assumptions about thedesire and ability of parties to shift the relative salience of different issue dimensions (cf. Riker 1990; Shafer andClaggett 1995; Carsey 2000) are precluded under ideo-logical realignment s notion that mass issue preferencesare unidimensional. But, they are perfectly consistent withour view that although the mass parties have grown morepolarized on multiple issue agendas, mass ideology has

remained multidimensional. Meanwhile, our evidencethat attentive partisans bring their own issue positions to-ward the consistently liberal or consistently conservativestands of Democratic and Republican elites, somethingnot predicted by conflict displacement accounts, suggeststhat parties may find some success using persuasion as astrategic tool. This is consistent with theories arguing thatit is necessary or at least often beneficial to parties to takenonmedian positions on issues (cf. Rabinowitz andMacdonald 1989; Gerber and Jackson 1993; Carsey 2000).Lastly, the importance that awareness of elite-level parti-san politics holds in the conflict extension account com-

ports with theories of the importance of information inelectoral politics (cf. Alvarez 1997), thus pointing moregenerally to the importance of awareness in linking mass-and elite-level politics.

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