The Failure of Liberal/Conservative Ideology as a Cognitive Structure

While the American electorate has been found less than fully capable of choosing among presidential candidates on the basis of their positions on the issues, there has been optimism that were that electorate encouraged to conceptualize politics on the basis of liberal and conservative ideological positions, the quality of vote choice would improve. Using ANES 1980's questions to assess the electorate's ability to lend correct definitions to the terms liberal and conservative, we find little basis for optimism that an ideologically sophisticated electorate would better select candidates reflecting the electorate's positions on the issues.