Aggregate party identification in Germany: the effects of consumer confidence and government approval

Partisanship has been the object of extensive scholarly attention. Because individual partisanship seemed relatively stable and insensitive to short term forces, aggregate partisanship was long thought to display no meaningful variation. This view was challenged by MacKuen et al. (1989), who found that aggregate partisanship in the United States is a¤ected by consumer con dence and presidential approval. This paper studies aggregate party identi cation in Germany, and how it has evolved in the past thirty years. Speci cally, we analyze the impact of consumer con dence and government approval on party identi cation. We conclude that rises in consumer con dence and government approval do indeed lead to increases in identi cation with the main governing parties.nrpages: 33status: publishe