Abstract

This paper extends Delli Carpini and Keeter's stratified democracy theory (1996) from the realm of political knowledge to ideological sophistication, in an attempt to answer the question, "Why do some people develop sophisticated systems of political opinions, while others do not?" After Converse's seminal findings of a mass-elite divide in levels of sophistication (1964), the literature specifically related to ideology along a presence-absence continuum largely devolved into methodological debates, leaving the question largely unanswered. Using National Election Study data, I propose a solution to those debates through improved measures of ideological consistency and stability. A path analysis that incorporated structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques suggests support for the treatment of ideological sophistication as a stratified resource, and suggests that sex, race, ethnicity, social capital, frequency of political discussions, level of political knowledge, and especially interest in politics and education are important determinants of ideological sophistication.