IT WAS PARTY IDENTIFICATION ALL ALONG - QUESTION ORDER EFFECTS ON REPORTS OF PARTY IDENTIFICATION IN BRITAIN

The British voter is less likely than the American to make a distinction between his current electoral choice and a more general partisan disposition. This article investigates whether this difference might be due to a methodological difference between the British and American Election surveys: the British surveys, unlike the American, have placed the party identification question after the question on electoral choice, and this order may encourage the British respondents to bring their reports of their party identification into line with their actual votes. A split-sample panel study experiment was conducted to test this hypothesis. The results were not decisive, but they did suggest that the 'improper' question order elicited a smaller proportion of 'true' party identifiers and produced response uncertainty in the reporting of party identification.