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We argue that most survey measures of partisanship are misclassifying many respondents as nonpartisans. Common wordings, especially those in major cross-national surveys, violate well-established best practices in questionnaire design by reading aloud a nonpartisanship option. This is akin, we show, to the taboo of inviting no-opinion responses. Consequently, most wordings produce high rates of false negatives, meaning respondents with partisan leanings who nonetheless choose the nonpartisan response. Our analysis of experimental and observational data from four countries (Brazil, Mexico, Russia, United States) shows that nearly a quarter of respondents are false negatives when read an easy nonpartisan opt out. More importantly, we demonstrate, using item response theory and other measurement checks, that wordings that remedy this problem by not inviting nonpartisan responses have greater measurement validity. Our findings show that scholars are underestimating the prevalence of partisanship and that harbors for false negatives can exist in unexpected forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens to partisanship when a party undergoes rapid and visible elite-led changes that dilute its traditional brand? We address scholarly debates on the stability of mass partisanship by analyzing the consequences of the major brand change (marked by policy moderation and scandal) experienced by the leftist Brazilian Workers Party (PT) between 2002 and 2006. Analyzing a survey panel with interviews spanning this period, we find that many Brazilian citizens alternated between petismo and independence but rarely crossed party lines. They switched, we demonstrate, in response to political events. While the PT's brand dilution drove away some traditional petistas, we observe two other dynamics: the rise of a new brand associated with the successful incumbent president (Lula) attracted new adherents, and amid this instability, a core of petistas stood by their party. Our findings suggest that scholarship on partisanship has established a false dichotomy between stability and instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]