The nature of party cues: A theoretical and empirical investigation

The question of why people are influenced by party cues is still heavily debated. We argue that lack of progress is partly the result of a too narrow, individual-centered, perspective on cue taking, resulting in weak links between theory and empirics. The dominant theories in the field make more nuanced predictions that are rarely considered jointly in empirical studies. We design a two-wave panel experiment, fielded during the 2022 Swedish election campaign, that allows us to test a broad set of theoretically derived hypotheses about party cues in a real-life context. The results show that cue effects vary with many different factors at the individual, issue-specific, and political environment levels, demonstrating the relevance on a dynamic perspective of cue taking. At the same time, the direct predictions of existing theories receive uneven support across individual, issue-specific, and political-environmental contexts, pointing to a clear need for theoretical development.