The Failure of Liberal/Conservative Ideology as a Cognitive Structure

While the American electorate has been found less than fullycapable of choosing among presidential candidates on the basisof their positions on the issues, there has been optimism thatwere that electorate encouraged to conceptualize politics onthe basis of liberal and conservative ideological positions,the quality of vote choice would improve. Using ANES 1980'squestions to assess the electorate's ability to lend correctdefinitions to the terms liberal and conservative, we find littlebasis for optimism that an ideologically sophisticated electoratewould better select candidates reflecting the electorate's positionson the issues.