“There is a considerable amount of literature analysing party members in relation to the intensity with which they hold their opinions (May, 1973) and also to the orientations to action that their beliefs lead them to (Kitschelt, 1989; Norris, 1995), but the common assumption is that members are in a party that corresponds to their personal ideological orientations. Given that parties are far from homogeneous entities, it is inevitable that they will contain members who differ on more than immediate policy prescriptions.
Some are bound to find themselves at odds with the party’s basic positions, and in that situation individuals have the option of leaving to join another party (or simply leaving active party membership), or of staying either as passive loyalists or vocal activists trying to change their party (Hirschman, 1970).
Those who stay despite recognizing they do not share the perspectives and political orientation of their party might be described as misfits. Misfits can therefore be defined as individual members who recognize a marked distance between their own orientation and that of their party. This category of member is of particular interest in the study of parties, and for several reasons. First, it can provide some insight into the profile of those most susceptible to exit. Surveys of party members cannot provide information on exmembers, but studying the misfits may be a first step in that direction. Second, misfits can provide information on internal ideological variation and incongruence, opening a window on factionalism and intra-party conflict, which are understudied aspects of political parties. Third, misfits may be crucial in our understanding the decision-making dynamics within political parties, which is another understudied topic in party politics.
Finally, the concept of party misfits gives us a new tool for testing May’s law of curvilinear disparity (1973) if we associate the party’s position with its upper-level elites. Identifying the misfits can help us identify and understand who the party radicals are.” – Emily van Haute and R. Kenneth Carty, Ideological misfits: a distinctive class of party members, Party Politics, 2012, 18 (6), p. 886