Elections and Divisiveness: Theory and Evidence

Abstract

This article provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of how politicians allocate their time across issues. When voters are uncertain about an incumbent's preferences, there is a pervasive incentive to "posture" by spending too much time on divisive issues (which are more informative about a politician's preferences) at the expense of time spent on common-values issues (which provide greater benefit to voters). Higher transparency over the politicians' choices can exacerbate the distortions. These theoretical results motivate an empirical study of how Members of the US Congress allocate time across issues in their floor speeches. We find that US senators spend more time on divisive issues when they are up for election, consistent with electorally induced posturing. In addition, we find that US house members spend more time on divisive issues in response to higher news transparency.Most citizens want a secure country, a healthy economy, safe neighborhoods, good schools, affordable health care, and good roads, parks, and other infrastructure. These issues do get discussed, of course, but a disproportionate amount of attention goes to issues like abortion, gun control, the Pledge of Allegiance, medical marijuana, and other narrow issues that simply do not motivate the great majority of Americans.-Fiorina, Adams, and Pope (2006, 202) Can't we wait on the things that we're going to yell at each other about and start on the things that we agree on? -Austan Goolsbee, Meet the Press, August 7, 2011 A s the above quotes illustrate, there is a widespread perception that the political process involves excessive amounts of time devoted to narrow and divisive issues. This raises the questions of why politicians spend so much time on these issues and if, as sometimes argued (e.g., Hillygus and Shields 2014), the focus on divisive issues is a response to electoral pressures. We provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of electoral pressures in driving divisive politics.The first contribution of this article is theoretical. We provide a positive theory of incumbent politicians' allocation of time and resources across two policy issues. While commonvalues issues are more important to the voters, voters are unsure of the politician's preferences on divisive issues. The politician has an incentive to overprovide effort on divisive issues, at the expense of common-values issues, to signal that she holds preferences that make her more attractive to the majority of voters. Moreover, this incentive to "posture" is stronger with higher transparency-that is, when voters have more information on the politician's effort choices.The second contribution is empirical. We construct a measure of divisive effort for members of the US Congress using the text of their floor speeches. We then report two new empirical findings. First, we exploit variation in the time to re-election for US senators to demonstrate that senators spend more time on divisive issues when elections are more imminent. Second, we exploit variation in...

Divisive Issues, Polarization, and Users’ Reactions on Facebook: Comparing Campaigning in Latin America

“…The topic addressed by political actors' social media posts and the engagement they generate in users is another key aspect from the perspective of political communication (Bene, 2021). During electoral campaigns, politicians may choose between focusing on divisive issues or consensual issues (Ash et al, 2017). Usually, voters are more likely to react less to consensual issues, such as quality education, accessible health care, and efficient public infrastructure (Simons & Green, 2018).…”

Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right

“…Furthermore, consistent exposure to slanted political news normalizes the information received [83]. This phenomenon, in turn, intensifies the divisiveness currently seen in the United States [84]. Thus, based on the literature, it seems likely the messaging perpetuated through conservative media (e.g., traditional American [White] way of life is under attack) influences viewers' (primarily White Americans) perceptions of social issues and that such sentiments are associated with feelings of status threat and affiliation with more extremist conservative ideologies.…”

(Not) Addressing issues in electoral campaigns

“…In fact much of the theoretical analysis on agenda formation highlights the role of campaign funding and its strategic use, proposing models where candidates or parties can affect the preferences of voters by modifying the salience of issues through the allocation of funds (see, e.g. Amorós and Puy, 2013; Aragonès et al, 2015; Dragu and Fan, 2016; Ash et al, 2017; Osório, 2018; Denter, 2020; Balart et al, 2022; Yamaguchi, 2022). Issue convergence or divergence can indeed result from such considerations but, as we will show, they also obtain if candidates do not face any budget constraints.…”