1 Advances in Political Economy - Department of Political Science

EDITOR’S PROOF

102 E. Schnidman and N. Schofield

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Fig. 3 Distribution of voter ideal points and candidate position in 2008

left hand domain in terms of an emphasis on justice while the right hand domain is

defined in terms of authority.^22

An analysis for the 2000 contest between Gore and Bush gives a similar result

with a partisan cleavage line given by

y= 1. 87 x− 0. 34. (4)

Figures3 and4 show the distribution of voter and activist preferred positions

for the 2008 election. For this election, thepartisan cleavage lineis given by the

equation

y= 0. 82 x− 0. 4 , (5)

which passes through the point( 0 ,− 0. 4 ). This cleavage line suggests the greater

advantage of the Democrat candidate, Obama, over McCain. Notice that the cleav-

age lines from 2000 to 2004 to 2008 had rotated slightly, in a clockwise direction,

suggesting that the social axis had become increasingly important.

(^22) More precisely, Graham et al. (2009) use factor analysis on five moral traits, including “compas-
sion”, “fairness”, “loyalty”, “authority” and “purity”. These define the four moral clusters. Mondak
et al. (2010) uses regression analysis to explore the effects of personality traits such as “openness”,
“conscientiousness”, “extraversion”, “agreeableness” and “emotional stability” on political choice.
Using the 2006 Congressional Election Study (CES) he shows that “openness” and “conscien-
tiousness” are correlated with liberal/conservative ideology respectively. Moreover, “openness” is
associated with agreement with legalized abortion and weakly associated with opposition to Fed-
eral income tax cuts. This analysis is suggestive of a correlation between the two dimensional trait
space and the two dimensional policy space.