您可以创建一个data.frame来保存旧名称和新名称，使用match提取当前信息，覆盖参与方名称，并使用rbind将新数据加入当前数据。

x <- data.frame(old="AB", new="RB")

y <- df[match(x$old, df$party),]
y$party <- x$new
rbind(df, y)

#  party     ideology
#1    AB         left
#2    PQ center-right
#3    HL        right
#4    AS        right
#5    RB         left

下面是一个dplyr解决方案：

library(dplyr)

x <- tibble(old = "AB", new = "RB")

df %>%
  filter(party == x$old) %>%
  mutate(party = x$new) %>%
  bind_rows(df, .)

party     ideology
1    AB         left
2    PQ center-right
3    HL        right
4    AS        right
5    RB         left

使用rows_upsert

library(dplyr)
 df %>%
   rows_upsert(tibble(party = "RB", ideology = df$ideology[df$party == 'AB']))

• 输出

party     ideology
1    AB         left
2    PQ center-right
3    HL        right
4    AS        right
5    RB         left