Core Political Values and Partisan Attitude Change

Core political values, which reflect abstract, prescriptive beliefs about humanity, society, and public affairs, have long been recognized as central elements in belief systems. Despite their demonstrated importance, for example, in structuring issue attitudes, evidence regarding their ability to shape partisanship is surprisingly under-examined, with limited evidence to date finding, in the United States, that partisanship structures core values, with little reciprocal influence. I reexamine this here, using panel data from the 2016-2020-2024 ANES. Overall, I find that ordinary Americans do indeed update their partisan attachments, to a substantively significant degree, in order to better align their party support with their core value orientations. I also find that this relationship is not confined to a politically sophisticated minority of the public. Importantly, I find that partisanship and values dynamically influence each other, rather than the former dominating the latter. These findings have important implications for collective understanding regarding mass belief systems, as well as for the nature and dynamics of American mass partisanship.