Partisanship typologies as a social identity: A research in terms of political ideology, authoritarianism, political trust, and the big five personality traits.

This study aims to examine the relationships between types of partisanship and political ideology, political trust, authoritarianism, and Big Five personality traits. The sample of the study consisted of 379 (254 closed partisans and 125 negative partisans) university students between the ages of 18-22 who were eligible to vote for the first time in the 2023 Turkish General Elections and in the first round of the 2023 Turkish Presidential Elections. Participants first approved the informed consent form. Then, they completed the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale, Political Trust Scale, the Big Five Personality Inventory, Partisanship Typologies Questionnaire, and Demographic Information Form, respectively. The results showed that religion, socioeconomic status, authoritarianism, and lack of ideology positively predicted partisanship, while right ideology, left ideology, and agreeableness personality traits negatively predicted partisanship. In respect of ideological positioning, statistically significant differences were found in the authoritarianism variable, while no statistically significant differences were found in the ideologically political trust variable. The two-fold partisanship (party identity) typologies that form the basis of the thesis consist of closed partisanship and negative partisanship. Closed partisanship, which is the first of the partisanships discussed with the background of social identity theory, is conceptualized as the existence of a party with which an individual identifies positively and the existence of a party with which an individual never intends to vote and therefore identifies negatively. Negative partisanship is explained by the fact that an individual has a party that the individual never intends to vote for and forms an individual party identity only through this negative identification.In terms of two-fold partisanship typologies, it was found that the left ideology levels of closed partisans were higher than moderate and no ideology while the left ideology levels of negative partisans were lower than the same ideologies. In terms of authoritarianism, it was found that negative partisans had higher levels of authoritarianism than closed partisans. Only in the skepticism sub-dimension of political trust, was it found that negative partisans had higher levels of skepticism than closed partisans. Finally, only the agreeableness personality trait among the Big Five personality traits was found to be higher in closed partisans than in negative partisans. These findings are discussed in the light of the related literature.