Issue salience and affective polarization

Abstract

ABSTRACT Which voters hold polarized affects for political parties in Western Europe? We consider distinct characteristics of different political issues that shape political actors’ behaviors and argue that voters are more affectively polarized when they put salience on cultural issues because their stances on the issues are embedded in their deep-seated identity, value, belief, and morality. Empirically, we use measures of affective polarization that incorporate the multiparty systems of Western European countries. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (Module 3), we find that voters who put salience on cultural issues are more affectively polarized than others. The result implies that rising affective polarization in the past decades might have been related to increasing priorities on cultural issues. It also implies that political parties may potentially weaken voters’ affective polarization by manipulating their issue agenda.