New research suggests that voters use political labels like “left” and “right” as mental shortcuts to infer politicians’ policy stances, even when their own political identities don’t exactly match their actual policy preferences. These findings demonstrate that while ideological labels can help voters navigate elections, they often function in a minimal way rather than fully reflecting policy alignment. The study was published in the journal quarterly public opinion.
Political scientists Sarah LaChance and Clareta Treger conducted the study to examine exactly how voters use ideological labels when evaluating political candidates. The authors wanted to test whether identifying as left-wing or right-wing actually means that voters have a corresponding set of strict policy beliefs.
“We had both a substantive and a methodological motivation to explore this topic,” explained Trager, a Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Essentially, we were interested in how Canadians use the ideological labels of left and right, given that Canada is a multiparty system and is highly polarized, especially at the elite level, but still not as ideologically organized as the United States.”
Canada’s political system has historically relied on brokerage politics, where political parties remain flexible and compromise in order to maintain national unity. Canada’s political parties have become more ideologically defined in recent years, making them an ideal testing ground to see if voters are adapting to these changes.
“Methodologically, we saw the Canadian case as a useful opportunity to separate policy-based and identity-based uses of ideology, precisely because ideology, party, identity, and policy preferences are not as tightly bundled as in the U.S. context,” Trager said. “This allowed us to ask whether voters use left-right labels to infer policy alignment with a candidate, or whether they use them more minimally to infer a candidate’s likely policy positions, even if their own ideological self-identification is not fully aligned with their policy preferences.”
Lachance and Trager distinguish between two forms of ideological thinking. The first is the maximum approach. This perspective assumes that individuals’ ideological self-configurations fully summarize their policy preferences across a variety of issues. In this approach, voters compare their labels with those of candidates to determine how well their policy ideas align.
The second approach is minimal theory. This idea suggests that voters themselves use candidates’ left- or right-wing labels to infer what policies politicians support, even though their policy preferences may be mixed or inconsistent. According to minimal theory, voters do not need to have perfect consensus beliefs to find a political label useful.
To evaluate these two theories, the researchers designed an online survey experiment. The sample included 1,087 adult Canadian voters. After removing incomplete responses, the scientists used data from 983 participants in the final analysis.
In the first part of the study, the researchers measured participants’ ideological self-configuration. Participants ranked themselves on a scale of 0 to 10. In this metric, 0 represents the left edge, 5 the center, and 10 the right edge.
The scientists also asked participants about their policy preferences on four specific issues. These issues include government deficits, climate action, immigration and COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The researchers selected these particular topics because they are strongly related to traditional understandings on the political left and right that center on the desired level of government intervention in socio-economic issues.
Respondents then participated in a collaborative experiment. A conjoint experiment is a statistical method that asks participants to choose between different profiles with randomly assigned characteristics. In this study, participants were asked to consider pairs of hypothetical political candidates and state their voting preferences.
Candidate profiles included characteristics such as gender, ethnic background, and political ideology on a scale of 0 to 10. All candidates were labeled as members of the Liberal Party of Canada. The researchers held party constant because the Liberal Party is a centrist organization that has historically adopted a mix of left- and right-wing policies, making different ideological labels easier for participants to believe.
Scientists randomly divided participants into two groups and tested how the information changed voting behavior. Half of respondents viewed a complete candidate profile, including the candidate’s specific policy positions on the four issues. The other half had reduced profiles that included no information about the candidate’s specific policy stances.
By comparing these two groups, LaChance and Trager tested whether having explicit policy information changes the extent to which voters rely on ideological labels. If maximum theory is correct, voters will rely heavily on ideological labels in the absence of policy information. And when faced with actual policy details, they will abandon mental shortcuts.
The researchers found that the majority of voters do not have policy preferences that perfectly match their ideological self-alignment. This discrepancy was especially common among people who identified as right-leaning. The data found that 43 percent of people who identify as right-leaning voters actually support primarily left-leaning policies.
“We were surprised by our findings that among most voters, especially those on the right, policy positions are not aligned with their ideological self-positioning,” Trager told SciPost. “Specifically, right-wing identifiers support many policies that are more left-leaning on the policy issues we considered. This may mean that right-wing voters use right-wing identifiers more symbolically than policy terms and more symbolically than left-wing identifiers.”
For example, even on the traditional economic issue of government deficits, more than half of voters who identified as right-wing took left-leaning positions. They supported increasing the deficit to increase spending on social services. Left-leaning voters, on the other hand, tended to hold more consistent policy views consistent with their political label.
Regarding voting choices, the authors observed that people generally prefer candidates who are ideologically close to them. Providing participants with explicit information about the candidates’ policy positions did not significantly change how much participants relied on the candidates’ ideological labels. This finding does not support the maximal theory of ideological thinking, as the presence of policy information did not weaken the effect of ideological labels.
Instead, the data provide evidence for a minimal theory. When participants in the information-reduced group had to evaluate candidates without knowing their specific policy stances, voters successfully used candidates’ left or right labels to infer what those candidates were likely to support.
Specifically, voters with primarily right-leaning policy preferences were more likely to vote for a candidate labeled as right-leaning, even if they had not seen the candidate’s exact policy platform. Changing a voter’s own preferences from exclusively left-leaning policies to exclusively right-leaning policies increased the likelihood of voting for a candidate labeled center-right or right-wing by 11 percentage points.
Similarly, voters who preferred left-leaning policies supported left-leaning candidates. This suggests that people use political labels to make educated guesses about politicians’ platforms, even if voters’ own political identities are somewhat disconnected from their particular policy views.
“The main point is that ideological labels like ‘left’ and ‘right’ don’t necessarily mean the same thing to voters as they do to political parties, politicians, and political analysts,” Trager said. “For many Canadians, especially those who identify as right-leaning, their ideological self-alignment does not fully align with their policy preferences, meaning voters may support a mix of left-leaning and right-leaning policies.”
She added that when voters use ideological labels, they may not be trying to find perfect policy alignment. Instead, labels may be used to infer candidates’ general tendencies or to respond to what those labels symbolize in terms of identity, values, or group affiliation.
“This matters for representation. If voters’ ideological identities do not align with their policy preferences, but they still select candidates based on ideological proximity, Congress may not fully reflect the public’s policy preferences. However, if voters care about other aspects of representation beyond policy, this may be less of a problem,” Trager said. “At the same time, this is an avenue for political compromise because it shows that voters across the political spectrum support both left-leaning and right-leaning policies.”
Although this study provides new insights into voter behavior, the authors note several potential limitations. One limitation is the specific set of policy issues included in the experiment. Scientists focused strictly on the socio-economic issues involved in government intervention. It is possible that voters use ideological labels to infer candidates’ positions on a variety of topics, such as cultural and moral issues, but this study does not test this.
Treger offered specific warnings about how far-reaching these findings may be. “Our findings also apply to multiparty systems with electorally viable central parties and parties with flexible platforms, as well as systems that are not completely ideologically organized,” she said.
The scientists suggest that future research could extend these findings by including more diverse aspects of policy. Exploring how identity and emotions influence these political shortcuts remains an interesting direction for future political science research.
The study, “Thinking Ideologically: The Limited Role of Left and Right Labels as Policy Shortcuts,” was authored by Sarah Lachance and Clareta Treger.
