Assessing the ideological extremism of American party activists

Abstract

In this article, we investigate whether it is appropriate to generalize about the ideological and demographic characteristics of American party activists. Many studies on party polarization emphasize the role of activists in encouraging the divisions within the parties, and in so doing, commonly treat activists as a homogeneous group. Here, we show that different forms of political activity attract systematically different types of individuals. Similarly, we show that ideological extremism is more strongly associated with some forms of activism than others. Importantly, we find that extremism is most strongly associated with the forms of activity that are most likely to influence elected officials through the provision of resources, information or support in a nomination. Thus, while our findings broadly support the notion that extremists are more engaged than moderates, we challenge the consensus that the various forms of activism are interchangeable.