The Relationship Between Partisanship and Personal Communication

An Analysis of the JEDS2000 Data

Abstract

Social network analysis, which has prospered since the achievements of Huckfeldt and Sprague in the 1980's, investigates the influence of personal communication on political attitudes and participation. That study has influenced some Japanese scholars, including Ikeda, who has set about that analysis. These days some public opinion polls on politics in Japan include questionnaires about social network, including JEDS2000, the data utilized for this paper. This paper identifies the factors that relate to the coincidences in partisanship between the panelists and those whom they contact. It considers not only supporters of the Liberal Democratic Party or the Democratic Party but nonpartisans as well, and mainly considers spouses and close friends as the persons whom the panelists contact. In this analysis, the main independent variables are the panelists' impressions of their spouses and close friends, and the dependent variables are the panelists' partisanship.