Nathan Kalmoe is a political scientist at Louisiana State University. He studies public opinion and mass political behavior. In 2017 he co-authored the book, Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public. In this episode, we talk about his research on how political ideology means different things to political leaders than to the general public, how lots of people tend to avoid describing themselves and liberal or conservative, but how they nevertheless seem perfectly comfortable identifying as Democrat or Republican.
Things we mention in this episode:
- Early research and writing by Phillip Converse and Walter Lippman
- Nathan’s recent article in Political Psychology: “Uses and Abuses of Ideology in Political Psychology”
- Nathan’s book with Donald Kinder: Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public
- His upcoming book: With Ballots and Bullets: Partisanship and Violence in the American Civil War