Exploring Hidden Moderates Among Young Voters

I’m working on a research project exploring whether “hidden moderates” exist among young American voters — specifically, whether people who identify strongly with a political party actually hold more moderate policy preferences when partisan cues are removed.

I'm using the 2022 Cooperative Election Study (CES), which includes many neutrally worded policy items and detailed measures of party ID and ideology. However, I trust the expertise of others, and if different data would fit better, I would be open to suggestions. I am looking for guidance as well as results in terms of completing this project; therefore, I am looking for someone confident enough to know what the best way to get results is.

Here’s what I’d like help with:

Identifying a set of CES policy items that are suitable for constructing a “policy moderation” scale

Filtering the data for young voters (ages 18–29)

Comparing party ID and ideological self-placement with policy preferences

Running regressions or creating visualizations to test whether strong partisans express policy views that are more moderate than expected

I’ll be doing the theoretical writing myself, but would really appreciate technical support in R for setting up the analysis pipeline.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in helping with, I’d love to discuss further!

Best regards,