Could your candidate shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose votes? Identifying “lines in the sand” in ingroup candidate transgressions

Howard, Kathryn; Cervone, Daniel; Motyl, Matt

doi:10.5964/jspp.5453

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…This extends to a range of inanimate objects that now carry a cultural sense of party identification (Hiaeshutter-Rice et al, 2021). Unfortunately, attempts to mitigate partisan bias through self-affirmation (West & Iyengar, 2020) or information (Bisgaard, 2019; Howard et al, 2022; McDonald et al, 2019) treatments seem minimally effective. But a recent working paper (Voelkel et al, n.d) offers more promising results.…”

Section: Affective Polarization and Partisan Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Partisan Bias in Episodes of Political Violence

Zyla

2024

American Politics Research

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Imagine two incidents of political violence. In the first, you share political affiliation with the victim. In the second, they reside in the opposite party. How would this minor change – a shifting label, the difference of a word – impact your reaction? This article offers empirical insight through an experiment: U.S. participants read a mock college controversy, where a student sent death threats to, and doxed, a professor. The treatment varied whether the perpetrator described the professor as a Democrat, Republican, or used otherwise non-descript (e.g., “political”) adjectives. A posttreatment survey then measured respondents’ discrete emotions, the penalties they preferred the student receive, and their partisan group identity strength. Participants who read about violence against a copartisan victim showed a statistically significant increase in preferred penalty severity. But violence against an outparty victim mirrored the control, with subjects reacting as if they didn’t know the political affiliation of anyone involved. Posttreatment measures also demonstrated the potential for anxiety (but not anger or partisan strength) to mediate this underlying partisan bias.

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Section: Affective Polarization and Partisan Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Partisan Bias in Episodes of Political Violence

Zyla

2024

American Politics Research

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“…Academics often misjudge that attraction. A recent study with a ‘Transgression Severity Scale’ came only to this hesitant conclusion: ‘It may be that Trump’s supporters did not perceive the act of not paying taxes to be severe enough to abandon him as a candidate’ (Howard et al, 2022). In fact, as we have seen time and again, Trump’s partisans have been willing to countenance ever more extreme scandals and provocations.…”

Section: The (Imaginary) Shot Heard ‘Round the Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Agitator Supplies What the Base Demands: Trumpism Before and After Donald Trump

Smith

2023

Critical Sociology

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The fierce loyalty of Donald Trump’s base has long mystified his critics. For 8 years now, they have expressed puzzlement that his followers support him ‘despite everything’—despite his incendiary rhetoric, his misogyny, his racial prejudices, and his authoritarianism. In this paper, I argue that, in fact, Trump’s hectic agitation is precisely what his base wants. My reading of the data—including data I gathered with my collaborator, Eric Hanley, in 2016—is that Trump owes his demagogic success to the fact that he says what his followers want him to say and acts accordingly. Donald Trump, today’s agitator par excellence, supplies what his base demands. Trump, in short, is less an architect of Trumpism than its reflex. However effectively he performs in the public arena, he remains an emissary, personifying a social movement that preceded him and will survive him. And that movement, I will argue, is authoritarian in a very specific sense—driven by a wish for a domineering leader who is loyal to his partisans and hostile to their adversaries. Analytic insight into this phenomenon is drawn, below, from a range of authors, including marketing professionals and critical theorists including Erich Fromm and Theodor W. Adorno.

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Do Fans Make Poor Referees? Exploring Citizens’ Reactions to Partisan Gamesmanship

Claassen,

Ensley,

Ryan

2024

Polit Behav

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Political (as opposed to professional) election oversight is one area in which the U.S. scores extremely low in measures of election integrity. Meanwhile, rancorous political battles to determine acceptable election procedures and judge when tactics cross the line have become common events. Our work contributes to recent scholarship investigating whether voters prioritize democratic principles or strategically favor electoral procedures that provide partisan advantage. In two survey experiments, we confirm that Americans’ attitudes about antidemocratic election tactics reveal more about which team they are cheering for than they do about whether the tactics are fraudulent. The tendency to engage in partisan motivated reasoning occurs among all partisans, but there are subtle differences as to when citizens will engage in it. Partisan motivated reasoning is more common when actions cause harm and by the partisans that are harmed. Finally, Independents are more impartial, but less likely to call out improper tactics in the aggregate because they often fail to condemn actions by either party.

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Could your candidate shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose votes? Identifying “lines in the sand” in ingroup candidate transgressions

Cited by 4 publications

References 38 publications

Partisan Bias in Episodes of Political Violence

Partisan Bias in Episodes of Political Violence

The Agitator Supplies What the Base Demands: Trumpism Before and After Donald Trump

Do Fans Make Poor Referees? Exploring Citizens’ Reactions to Partisan Gamesmanship

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