11:00 - 13:15
Thursday-Panel
Chair/s:
Maurits Meijers
Discussant/s:
Rune Slothuus
Meeting Room A

Clareta Treger
Partisan Cues Dominate Ideological Preferences in Policy Appraisal. Experimental Evidence

Renu Singh
Partisanship, Elite Cues, and Support for Public Health Policies in Germany and the United States

Rune Slothuus, Rasmus Skytte, Martin Bisgaard
What's in a Cue? How Citizens Infer Policy Information from Party Cues

Björn Bremer, Maurits Meijers, Theresa Kuhn, Francesco Nicoli
Party Cues and Support for Common European Debt: Experimental Evidence of In- and Out-Party Cues in Five Countries

Markus Wagner, Thomas Meyer
How do voters form perceptions of party positions?
What's in a Cue? How Citizens Infer Policy Information from Party Cues
Rune Slothuus, Rasmus Skytte, Martin Bisgaard
Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

When citizens learn the policy position of their party they appear to ignore information about the content of policy. This has led to the view, widespread among public opinion scholars, that party cues are in contrast to policy information. In this article, we provide theory and evidence that challenge this understanding in one important way: A party cue could---in and of itself---lead citizens to draw relevant inferences about the content and immediate consequences of policy. Across four experiments conducted on different policy areas with different party sponsors, we show that citizens "see" substantially different policies depending on the policy reputation of the sponsoring party. When citizens follow the policy position of their party this behavior could be grounded in much more policy-relevant considerations than revealed in existing research, suggesting a less bleak interpretation of party cue effects.