Political Polarization During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Sebastian Jungkunz

doi:10.3389/fpos.2021.622512

Abstract

Affective polarization has increased substantially in the United States and countries of Europe over the last decades and the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic have the potential to drastically reinforce such polarization. I investigate the degree and dynamic of affective polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic through a two-wave panel survey with a vignette experiment in Germany fielded in April/May and July/August 2020. I 1) compare the findings to a previous study from 2017, and 2) assess how economic distress due to the crisis changes perceptions of other partisans. Results show that the public today experiences slightly stronger polarization between AfD voters and supporters of other parties. Yet, higher economic distress decreases the negative sentiment of voters of other parties towards AfD supporters. I argue that experiencing economic distress increases the awareness of political debate and the responsiveness to government decisions. Thus, in times of broad cross-party consensus, this can translate into public opinion so that it makes people less hostile towards other partisans.

Highlights

In recent years affective political polarization has increased dramatically in the United States (Iyengar et al, 2019), and in Europe and elsewhere (Reiljan, 2020; Wagner, 2020)
Given that the AfD was more or less in line with the COVID-19 response measures issued by the government at that time, it indicates that cross-party consensus can potentially curb further affective polarization
There is suggestive evidence that the way parties and politicians handle the response to the corona crisis influences the polarization of public opinion

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In recent years affective political polarization has increased dramatically in the United States (Iyengar et al, 2019), and in Europe and elsewhere (Reiljan, 2020; Wagner, 2020). Supporters of right-wing populist parties strongly oppose partisans of green or left-wing parties and vice versa, whereas both strongly favor their own fellow partisans. Such animosity is based on strong in-group identification and negative partisanship with out-groups (Tajfel and Turner, 1979; Medeiros and Noël, 2014) and not necessarily strong policy disagreement. Outparty animus is stronger than antipathy towards different ethnic groups and it is asymmetric: supporters of mainstream parties dislike supporters of right-wing populist parties much more strongly than vice versa. Results show that higher economic distress decreases the negative sentiment of center and left-wing party voters towards AfD supporters, but not vice versa. Under broad cross-party consensus, this can translate into public opinion so that it makes people less hostile towards other partisans

POLARIZATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

DATA AND METHOD

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

ETHICS STATEMENT