Polarizing Cues

Nicholson, Stephen P.

doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00541.x

Cited by 384 publications

(259 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…I explore whether the strength of partisanship can disconfirm the racial-political stereotypes that are normally applied to minority candidates. Because the strength of party labels plays such a strong role in affirming voter attitudes (Rahn, 1993;Nicholson, 2011), I hypothesize that a Democratic partisan affiliation will feed into pre-existing racial-political stereotypes and that this will lead to a racial bias against minority Democratic candidates. This bias should manifest itself in respondents rating their minority Democrats as more ideologically extreme.…”

Section: When Does Race Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

When Does Race Matter? Exploring White Responses to Minority Congressional Candidates

Visalvanich

2015

SSRN Journal

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How significant of a factor is race in minority candidate evaluation? I present theory of race and minority candidate evaluation which argues that candidate race acts as an informational heuristic that affects perceptions of a candidate's ideological leaning and competence but that this effect is dependent on contextual factors, including the racial group and candidate partisanship. Using the 2010 and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Elections Study, I provide an observational look at Latino and Asian candidates in addition to black candidates for the first time, as well as minority candidates of both partisan stripes. I examine voter perceptions about candidates that might drive their vote choice, namely ideological assessments and competence assessments. I find that white voters are less likely to support Latino and black Democrats because they are viewed as less competent and more ideologically extreme. I find that Asian candidates and minority Republicans are largely unaffected by these biases.

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Section: When Does Race Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

When Does Race Matter? Exploring White Responses to Minority Congressional Candidates

Visalvanich

2015

SSRN Journal

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“…This process might lead to a polarization spiral, in which voters' adherence to party lines gets even stronger, since the split between them and an out-group gets clearer (Druckman et al, 2013), and the radicalization of supporters drives party elites toward them in turn. It has been observed that a politician's endorsement of a policy might have a polarizing effect not only by lining up her own supporters behind it, but by generating repulsion for it from opponents (Nicholson, 2012).…”

Section: How Can Prrp's Contribute To Mass Polarization?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Populist radical right parties and mass polarization in the Netherlands

Silva¹

2017

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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Radical parties have been found to succeed under conditions of mass polarization. It is argued that their message resonates better with voters at the extremes of an ideological spectrum. This paper investigates if the reverse also holds, meaning that radical parties may contribute to the polarization of the public. I test this claim in the Netherlands, a country that has experienced the rise of populist radical right parties since 2002, using a synthetic control model built with a pool of comparable countries and Eurobarometer survey data. Results show that, after the rise of Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders, the level of polarization among the Dutch public increased more than it otherwise would have. These findings contribute to understanding the connection between elite-and mass-level polarization, and the consequences of populist radical right parties' emergence in Western Europe.

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“…Even so, most evidence to date suggests that, on political issues, individuals generally lack such motivation and instead fall back on 5 This coheres with social identity theory-indeed, motivated reasoning should be driven by individuals' desire to be loyal to and consistent with their own group and to maximize difference with the outgroup. Partisan groups are clearly important to political categorization (Nicholson 2012;Smith et al 2005). 6 It is implied that we expect perceptions of frame effectiveness to mediate the process by which the frame will influence overall attitude.…”

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confidence: 99%

How Elite Partisan Polarization Affects Public Opinion Formation

Druckman¹,

2013

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E.E. Schattschneider (1960, 138) concluded his classic book, The Semisovereign People, by defining democracy as "a competitive political system in which competing leaders and organizations define the alternatives of public policy in such a way that the public can participate in the decision-making process" (italics in original). Although his work vastly influenced the trajectory of multiple areas of political science, his concluding conception of democracy has received relatively scant attention. In this article, we take up an aspect of his definition by addressing this question: How does the tenor of political competitiona defining element of democracy-affect the nature of citizen decision making?We focus on one of the most discussed contemporary developments in U.S. politics: elite polarization. Over the last quarter-century, elected representatives and activists from the major parties have become more ideologically distinct from one another and more internally homogeneous (e.g., McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006). Therefore, following previous work, we define elite polarization as high levels of ideological distance between parties and high levels of homogeneity within parties. Lively debate revolves around the causes and consequences of elite polarization, with notable attention to whether citizens have also become polarized. Although there is far from a consensus on the status of citizen polarization (e. 582; Hetherington 2009, 429), we nonetheless turn to the more fundamental question of how elite polarization affects the nature of citizen decision making.We theorize and find, with two experiments on immigration and energy, that elite polarization dramatically changes the ways citizens form opinions. This change occurs because polarization stimulates partisan motivated reasoning, which in turn generates decision making that relies more on partisan endorsements and less on substantive arguments. We discuss the consequences of this shift in decision-making criteria for understanding the nature of public opinion. We also consider the implications of these findings for normative debates about "quality opinions" and more general discussions about polarization and democratic competition. 1 FRAMING AND PARTY COMPETITIONOur goal is to assess the impact of elite polarization on citizen decision making. To do so, we employ a counterfactual: We compare the decisions citizens reach in the presence of competing arguments made in a polarized environment against those made in less polarized environments (see Mansbridge 1983, 25). Our central question is, do opinions formed under conditions of elite polarization differ from those formed sans polarization? We specifically compare the role of perhaps the two most widely used types of information on which citizens base political decisions: substantive arguments (of varying types or "strengths") in the form of distinct issue frames and partisan cues. We discuss each in turn. FramingWe operationalize "arguments" as directional issue or emphasis frames. Few topics have been s...

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Polarizing Cues

Cited by 384 publications

References 49 publications

When Does Race Matter? Exploring White Responses to Minority Congressional Candidates

When Does Race Matter? Exploring White Responses to Minority Congressional Candidates

Populist radical right parties and mass polarization in the Netherlands

How Elite Partisan Polarization Affects Public Opinion Formation

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