Enemy or Ally? Elites, Base Relations, and Partisanship in America

Abstract

Abstract A wealth of research demonstrates that partisans dismiss information that challenges their attitudes toward political elites, especially when citizens are aware of these elites’ party membership. Relatively little is known, however, about the conditions under which partisans will adjust their support for such elites. Drawing upon research on the group-foundations of partisanship, I hypothesize that, issues and policy stances aside, partisans’ support for, and willingness to compromise with, a given elite is contingent upon how well the elite relates to the groups associated with his or her party (i.e., the party’s “base”). In short, partisans should be inclined to exhibit greater political support for, and greater willingness to compromise with, the enemy of their socio-political enemies, but less support for the enemy of their socio-political allies. Findings from survey experiments and observational analyses involving real-world executives offer strong empirical support for these contentions. Thus, while acknowledging the powerful effects of cues involving elites’ party labels, this study reveals that “base relations” cues can potentially counteract the motivated reasoning processes that arise from partisans’ attentiveness to party cues alone. Such effects should be observed, I argue, precisely because base relations cue an elite’s fidelity to the very groups that endow the party label with its symbolic meaning. Therefore, more broadly, this study advances our understanding of polarization by demonstrating an important way in which politically aligned social groups underpin American partisanship and public opinion.