The Group Basis of Partisan Affective Polarization

Abstract

What explains rising partisan animosity in the United States? We argue that mass partisans' feelings toward the social group coalitions of the parties are an important cause of rising affective polarization. We first leverage evidence from the ANES Time Series to show that partisans' feelings toward the social groups linked to their in-party (out-party) have grown more positive (negative) over time. We then turn to the 1992-1996 and 2000-2004 ANES Panel surveys to disentangle the interrelationship between partisan polarization and social group evaluations. Individuals with more polarized social group evaluations in 1992 or 2000 report substantially more polarized party thermometer ratings and more extreme, and better sorted, partisan identities four years later. Notably, these variables exerted little reciprocal influence on group evaluations. Our study has important implications for understanding affective polarization and the role of social groups in public opinion.

'Them' Without 'Us': Negative Identities and Affective Polarisation in Brazil

“…When individuals are distant on a range of group-based divides they become more socially isolated and less able to cope with threat, leading to more negative feelings about out-group members than those with cross-cutting identities (Ahler & Sood 2018;Mason & Wronski 2018). Indeed, Mason (2016Mason ( , 2018aMason ( , 2018b consistently finds that aligning social identities are associated with affective polarisation in the United States, whilst Iyengar et al (2012) and Robison and Moskowitz (2019) show a significant link between negative evaluations of societal groups related to one's out-party and higher levels of out-party dislike. From a comparative perspective, Harteveld (2019) finds evidence for the effects of social sorting across American, European, and Asian countries.…”

“…The bulk of extant literature on affective polarisation, however, is concentrated either on the specific cases of the United States (Iyenger at al. 2012;Webster & Abramowitz 2017;Mason 2018b;Robison & Moskowitz 2019) or Western Europe (Wagner 2021;Westwood et al 2018;Hobolt et al 2020). Such contexts are characterised by highly institutionalised party systems (Dalton & Weldon 2007), programmatic patterns of political competition (Kitschelt 2000), strong linkages between social groups and political parties (Lipset & Rokkan 1967), and entrenched and stable partisan identities (Neundorf et al 2011;Huddy et al 2015;Bankert et al 2017).…”

Inequality Federalism and Economic Self-Interest in Subnational Progressive Tax Politics

“…While we were unable to control for additional factors such as core values (e.g., egalitarianism or individualism) or affect toward social groups (e.g., racial minorities, the poor, etc. ), we do control for partisanship in each model and existing research indicates that party identification shapes and constrains core values (Goren 2005) and is substantially driven by feelings toward social groups (Kane et al 2019; Miller et al 1991; Robison and Moskowitz 2019). 3…”

Compound Political Identity: How Partisan and Racial Identities Overlap and Reinforce

“…Another strand of research brings new attention to the relationships between social identities. "Socially sorted" individuals with multiple identities that align with their partisanship dislike their political opponents more than others with cross-cutting identities (Mason, 2018(Mason, , 2016Levendusky, 2018;Robison and Moskowitz, 2019). This pattern does not occur in all circumstances as Klar (2018) isolates conditions in which a shared identity (gender) magnifies differences between members of different political parties.…”

“…More recently, Barack Obama's emergence as the Democratic presidential nominee racialized partisan attitudes during his presidency (Tesler, 2013(Tesler, , 2016. Finally, considering social out-groups more broadly, those with polarized views of social groups related to a political party develop elevated levels of affective partisan polarization several years later (Robison and Moskowitz, 2019). These studies show a malleable association between racial and partisan attitudes, but make clear that change happens slowly, even when aided by elite rhetoric emphasizing shifts in a political party's reputation (Carmines and Stimson, 1989;Kinder and Sanders, 1996).…”