Scholars of political representation debate whether ideology is issue based–i.e., founded on substantive attitudes–or a social identity–i.e., derived from a sense of group-belonging. I argue that there is no contradiction between identity and issue-based ideology and that the degree of disconnect between attitudes and ideological self-placement has been exaggerated. I examine 10 panel surveys, spanning 45 years and 295,405 interviews, to show that ideological identification is about as stable over time as that greatest of political identities: partisanship. Additionally, data from the American National Election Studies indicate that ideological self-placement today is as affectively loaded as party identification. I also show that the labels ``liberal,'' ``moderate,'' and ``conservative'' are strongly predictive of attitudes, once we control for measurement error. Therefore, ideology has both an identity-based and an attitudinal dimension to it. Scholars also debate whether or not ideology matters in American politics. Some argue that it is predictive of behavior, while others claim its role is negligible. I employ a variety of estimators to isolate the independent relationship between ideological identification and presidential, Congressional and gubernatorial vote choice. I find significant and substantively large effects of ideology on presidential and Congressional elections. These results suggest a more optimistic view of democracy than has been the norm among most students of American politics--one in which voters are comfortable with ideological language and vote accordingly.