The persistence hypothesis holds that core political predispositions tend to be highly stable
through the life span. It has rarely been tested directly, given the scarcity of long-term, large …

At the micro-level, political socialization research has emphasized the persistence of
political orientations learned prior to adulthood. This emphasis has led to an implicitly …

The importance of factual political knowledge in affecting information processing and
political behavior has recently received considerable attention. However, relatively little is …

The partisan realignment of the White South, which transformed this region from being
solidly Democratic to being the base of the Republican Party, has been the focus of much …

This article examines three hypotheses about the relation between age and the stability of
sociopolitical attitudes. The hypotheses are (1) the impressionable-year hypothesis, which …

Recently political scientists have looked anew at the source of political preferences and find
support for the heuristic that political attitudes and behaviors are influenced by endogenous …

The traditional view that party identification develops at an early age, is remarkably stable
throughout life, and is relatively unaffected by other political attitudes has been recently …

Party identification is known to influence almost all aspects of political life. How this
attachment develops across the adult life cycle, however, remains unknown. I argue that …

From a cohort analysis spanning twenty-four years, Glenn and Hefner conclude that there is
no evidence for the proposition that the process of aging leads to Republican party …

This chapter presents a literature review expanding research on political socialization to
development of political attitudes and behavior over the full life course. The fundamental …