Partisan Effects Research Articles

Geographical analysis of political epidemiology: Spatial quantification of simultaneity between politics and pandemics

Using the sequence of events in 2020, we study simultaneity between political behavior and pandemics. Capitalizing on spatial quantification to untangle simultaneity between politics and pandemics with county as the basic territorial unit, we examine the politics-on-pandemic impact from the outbreak to Election Day. The relations seem more directional than bidirectional and limited in time. Bigdata for 250 M US citizens and tens of thousands of county-days indicate an initial partisan effect on the R reproduction coefficient via a range of mobility types, which disappeared after the outbreak. Then, we quantify the opposite pandemic-on-politics pattern in the form of COVID-19's effect on the 2020 elections, with data for 150 M voters. Our spatial analyses offer scant support for simultaneity in the relations between political behavior and COVID-19. If there is an effect of pandemics on politics, it is often insignificant and never of meaningful magnitude.

The Regulation of Pre-election Polls: A Citizen’s Perspective

Abstract The number of legislations around the world restricting the use and publication of pre-election polls during election campaigns is on the rise. However, we do not have a good sense of the extent to which citizens are against the publication of pre-election polls and what factors drive support or opposition for their regulation. In this research note, we tackle these issues using data from the 2019 Canadian Election Study. Our findings show that citizens are quite divided on whether polls should be banned during the last week of the campaign. Moreover, contrary to our expectations, we find almost no evidence of partisan effects in citizens’ opinions about the regulation of polls. We interpret these findings as good news for democracy as citizens, at least in some contexts, do not seem to rely on partisan considerations when it comes to the regulation of political information.

Widespread partisan gerrymandering mostly cancels nationally, but reduces electoral competition

Congressional district lines in many US states are drawn by partisan actors, raising concerns about gerrymandering. To separate the partisan effects of redistricting from the effects of other factors including geography and redistricting rules, we compare possible party compositions of the US House under the enacted plan to those under a set of alternative simulated plans that serve as a nonpartisan baseline. We find that partisan gerrymandering is widespread in the 2020 redistricting cycle, but most of the electoral bias it creates cancels at the national level, giving Republicans two additional seats on average. Geography and redistricting rules separately contribute a moderate pro-Republican bias. Finally, we find that partisan gerrymandering reduces electoral competition and makes the partisan composition of the US House less responsive to shifts in the national vote.

Partisanship and Tolerance for Clientelism: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in Romania

Studies on electoral clientelism are increasingly focusing on the demand side and explaining how voters react to electoral inducements. However, there is limited research about how candidate attributes and partisanship can determine citizens’ reactions to clientelism. This article therefore tests the relative weight that voters place on candidate attributes and partisanship in their reactions to clientelistic targeting in the context of a new democracy. We use evidence from an original conjoint experiment conducted in 2021 in Romania, where electoral clientelism is frequent. Our findings show that citizens react negatively to clientelistic inducements in general, but the effects vary based on the targeting strategy used by politicians. These negative effects are considerably weaker among co-partisans. This observation is especially relevant when testing the effect of partisanship in a political setting where it is low.

Hashtags as signals of political identity: #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter.

We investigate perceptions of tweets marked with the #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter hashtags, as well as how the presence or absence of those hashtags changed the meaning and subsequent interpretation of tweets in U.S. participants. We found a strong effect of partisanship on perceptions of the tweets, such that participants on the political left were more likely to view #AllLivesMatter tweets as racist and offensive, while participants on the political right were more likely to view #BlackLivesMatter tweets as racist and offensive. Moreover, we found that political identity explained evaluation results far better than other measured demographics. Additionally, to assess the influence of hashtags themselves, we removed them from tweets in which they originally appeared and added them to selected neutral tweets. Our results have implications for our understanding of how social identity, and particularly political identity, shapes how individuals perceive and engage with the world.

The psychological partisan effect of electoral systems: How ideology correlates with strategic voting

Districted proportional systems give an edge to right-wing parties that are more popular in rural areas where district magnitude is small and large parties are mechanically advantaged. In this paper, we explore the role played by voters in this bias by looking at how ideology correlates with strategic voting. We analyze survey data from 44 elections in Western Europe and find that left-wing voters are more likely to support a party that is not viable ( p < 0.01), but once in this position they seem less likely to desert this party for one that is viable ( p < 0.1). Further, we find that this pattern is likely driven by the intensity of partisan preferences as left-wing voters are on average more attached to their favorite party and thus more reluctant to desert it ( p < 0.01). Our study thus demonstrates that the psychological effect of districted proportional systems amplifies the mechanical one in advanced industrial democracies.

The Impact of Voter Education on Voter Confidence: Evidence from the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

In this article, we assess whether voters who live in states where state election officials (EOs) invested in voter education have higher levels of confidence in vote counting. We argue state investment in voter education strengthens voter confidence by improving voter experiences and creating a culture of voter education, both of which facilitate transparency in elections. We measure state election official investment in voter education during the 2020 U.S. Presidential election by merging a unique dataset of EO social media communications during the last months of the 2020 election cycle with various election administration data sources. We find EO use of Facebook bolsters confidence in vote counting at the personal, local, and state level. Importantly, voters predisposed to question election integrity living in these states—those highly skeptical about the occurrence of fraud and who supported Donald Trump in 2016—express higher confidence at the personal, local, and state level in states where EOs were active on Facebook in 2020. Findings are mixed for measures of resource investment in voter education through federal and private funding. Our study is the first to establish a positive relationship between voter education and voter confidence. However, our findings also underscore the pervasive effects of partisanship and national narratives about stolen elections.

Perceiver and target partisanship shift facial trustworthiness effects on likability

The affective polarization characteristic of the United States’ political climate contributes to pervasive intergroup tension. This tension polarizes basic aspects of person perception, such as face impressions. For instance, face impressions are polarized by partisanship disclosure such that people form positive and negative impressions of, respectively, shared and opposing partisan faces. How partisanship interacts with other facial cues affecting impressions remains unclear. Building on work showing that facial trustworthiness, a core dimension of face perception, is especially salient for ingroup members, we reasoned that shared and opposing partisanship may also affect the relation between facial trustworthiness characteristics and subsequent likability impressions. A stronger positive relation emerged for shared versus opposing partisan faces across more conservative and liberal perceivers (Experiments 1 and 2). Exploratory analyses showed that this difference links to perceived partisan threat (Experiment 1) and that experimentally manipulating inter-party threat strengthened opposing partisan derogation and shared partisan enhancement patterns (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that partisanship extends from affecting overall face impressions of partisans to affecting the relation between a core dimension of face perception and subsequent impressions. These findings highlight the prevalence of partisanship effects in basic aspects of person perception and have implications for intergroup behavior.

Polarized Politics: Protest Against COVID-19 Containment Policies in the USA

Abstract Protest against containment policies in U.S. states is fueled by two drivers: the stringency of containment policies and the partisan control over the governorship and legislatures in each state. In our analysis of the period from March 2020 to March 2022, we find more protest events in states fully controlled by Democrats than in Republican controlled states both in a sample consisting of all states and a balanced sample in which we constrain observations to those red and blue states with on average similarly stringent containment policies. Protest was therefore politicized, and we find that partisanship exerts a roughly equal substantive effect on the number of protest events as the stringency of containment policies. If we assume no direct effect of partisanship on protest but allow for causal heterogeneity along partisan lines in the effect of containment policies, we find that the same increase in the stringency of policies evokes a stronger protest response in blue states than in red states.

Politically motivated interpersonal biases: Polarizing effects of partisanship and immigration attitudes

We demonstrate effects of political preferences on interpersonal interactions in the environment of the highly unstable and volatile party system of the Czech Republic. The effects of partisanship on interpersonal relations are compared to the effects of attitudes on a salient issue. Two experiments confirm the potential of political partisanship to affect the individual’s ingroup preferences and outgroup biases, which can influence willingness to converse with others in the context of an unstable party system. In a conjoint experiment, dis/agreement on immigration has comparable effects on interpersonal interactions. Avoidance of interactions with out-partisans is amplified when out-partisans talk about politics often. The patterns of ingroup preferences and outgroup biases are replicated in a trust game experiment. Both partisanship and immigration attitudes influence how subjects interact with others. Given the political context, the study provides a hard test of politically motivated ingroup and outgroup biases stemming both from party and policy preferences.

Going green or making green? The effects of partisanship and inflation on environmental executive orders, 1945−2020

Going green or making green? The effects of partisanship and inflation on environmental executive orders, 1945−2020

Gender segregation in parliamentary committees of Turkey: Intermediary spaces of women's political representation

Do the Turkish parliamentary committees exhibit gendered appointment practices? If so, what are the driving factors behind women's limited representation in some committees? Previous studies find a division of labor in committees based on the perceived gender roles: women legislators are over-represented in low-prestige committees with “feminine” themes such as family, health, and education, whereas they are under-represented in strategically key policymaking committees. These studies —mostly on Western democracies— explain this gender bias with the appointment practices of the conservative right-wing parties. Using an original dataset of appointments between 2002 and 2020, this paper examines the partisan effects on the under- and over-representation of women on certain committees in the Turkish context. We find that all parties except the small left-wing Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) perform in a similarly biased way. We argue that parliamentary committees are gendered institutional spaces greatly affected by the institutional culture of political parties. Even though institutional culture is mostly shaped by ideological stances, political parties are still among institutional spaces where ideologies of masculinity are effectively shaping power relations. We conclude that institutionalizing mechanisms that enhance agential capacities and practices at the party level are vital for gender equality within the political sphere.

The impact of perceived partisanship on climate policy support: A conceptual replication and extension of the temporal framing effect

Bridging the political divide between liberals and conservatives is one of the biggest challenges in reaching broad public support of climate policies. Research has suggested that framing climate policies with respect to the past may reduce opposition by political conservatives, but recent attempts to replicate this effect have failed. A new perspective on these inconsistent findings may be offered by taking the influence of temporal framing on individuals' perception of the messenger into account. The present work investigated how implicit cues contained in temporal message framing as well as explicit political identity cues shape the perceived political orientation of a messenger and subsequent climate policy support by partisans. Across three experiments (Ntotal = 2012), we found that past (vs. future) framing and conservative (vs. liberal) party affiliation independently contributed to the messenger being perceived as more conservative. Past framing and conservative party affiliation increased endorsement of the messenger and the message by conservatives, but decreased endorsement by liberals. However, past framing and conservative party affiliation independently increased conservatives’ climate policy support, with mixed effects on liberals. Moreover, a temporal framing effect only emerged when messenger party affiliation was made explicit, suggesting that activating individuals' political identity facilitates the integration of implicit identity cues contained in temporal framings. We discuss the theoretical implications of our integrated account for the observation of partisan effects and reassess the potential of temporal framings to reduce the political divide on climate change.

Multidimensional partisanship shapes climate policy support and behaviours

Partisanship is one of the largest and most studied social barriers to climate change mitigation in the United States. Here we expand conceptualizations of ‘left-right’ or ‘Democrat-Republican’ towards understanding partisanship as a multidimensional social identity with both negative and positive elements. Partisan support or opposition for climate action can be driven by identification with the partisan in-group (positive or ‘expressive’ partisanship), as well as perceived threats from the ‘out-group’ (negative partisanship). Using original survey data, we show that when negative and expressive partisanship is low, climate policy support is similar for Republicans and Democrats. However, differences in policy support increase when partisan identification amplifies. Yet, for climate behaviours, we find more limited partisan effects. The proposed multidimensional partisanship framework revisits the role of partisan polarization in shaping climate change action and points to alternative ways to transcend partisan barriers.

Parallel Worlds? The Partisan Effects of COVID-19 on Real Estate

Parallel Worlds? The Partisan Effects of COVID-19 on Real Estate

Partisanship, Ideology, and Selective Exposure: A Longitudinal Analysis of Media Consumption in Spain (2008–2019)

The literature on selective exposure has shown that ideology and voting govern media consumption decisions, but longitudinal studies are still scarce. To fill this gap, this work analyzes: (a) whether selective exposure guided by ideology and partisanship to three media types (television, radio, and newspapers) is a stable phenomenon in Spain (2008–2019) as expected from a polarized pluralistic media system; and (b) which variable has the strongest effects on news choices (ideology or partisanship). Multinomial logistic regressions are carried out using data sources from six post-electoral surveys conducted by the Center for Sociological Research in the last six Spanish general elections (2008–2019). As dependent variables, we consider the four most important preferred media outlets for each media type, and as independent variables, we include the vote in general election and ideology. Moreover, interest in politics, gender, age, education, and social class are included as control variables, too. Findings show strong evidence that selective exposure based on ideology and partisanship is a well-established phenomenon in Spain for the three media types during the 11 years. Results also show that the effect of partisanship is always stronger than that of ideology for the three news media types. We conclude that selective exposure in Spain needs therefore to be conceived as partisan selective exposure.

Partisan bias in responses to sexual misconduct allegations against male politicians

Across two studies, we tested whether evaluations of sexual misconduct allegations against male politicians are made in a partisan biased manner. First, we investigated the likelihood a sexual misconduct allegation made by a female staffer was perceived as legitimate by Democratic and Republican participants when the accused politician’s party affiliation was aligned (versus unaligned) with the participant’s own affiliation (Study 1). We also tested whether partisan bias was conditional on the strength of the participant’s expressive partisanship (Study 2). In Study 1, 182 Democratic and 159 Republican affiliates (N = 341), recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk, were randomly allocated to one of three conditions (Democratic, Republican, or unaffiliated accused politician). Findings indicated that Republican participants were less likely than Democrats to perceive a sexual misconduct allegation as legitimate, irrespective of the politician’s party affiliation. Nonetheless, participants were not more likely to perceive a sexual misconduct allegation against an unaligned politician as more legitimate than against a politician of their own party. However, in a replication of Study 1 with a larger sample (301 Democratic and 301 Republican affiliates), Republicans (but not Democrats) demonstrated partisan bias in judgements of the legitimacy of misconduct allegations. Expressive partisanship did not moderate this partisan effect.

Does Party Colour Matter? The Effect of Government Partisanship on Pledges’ Left–Right Location

Abstract Despite extensive research on the ‘politics matter’ hypothesis, the findings achieved so far remain ambiguous. Inspired by that hypothesis, this research focuses on electoral promises, a chief but as yet untested indicator. It examines whether government party colour explains the adoption of an ideologically committed policy agenda in electoral manifestos. To answer this goal the research looks at the left–right placement of manifesto pledges of the Portuguese governing parties between 1995 and 2019. The results indicate that partisanship significantly explains the executive’s party agenda-setting and that this relationship prevails over time. Findings also suggest that the partisan effect is mediated by issue salience.

Understanding anti-Asian sentiment and political behavior in the wake of COVID-19

ABSTRACT Given media reports of racism and hate crimes against Asians since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine whether explicit attitudes toward Asians in the United States changed more generally following the start of the pandemic. We compare two national samples of Americans before and after the onset of the pandemic, as well as replicating our findings in a panel dataset that spans the onset of the pandemic. We find that Americans’ feelings toward Asian Americans – but not toward other racially minoritized groups – became more negative after the onset of the pandemic. This heightened negative sentiment toward Asians is observed regardless of political ideology. Moreover, we find that the degree of exposure to the coronavirus is associated with anti-Asian attitudes, suggesting that the circumstances of the pandemic are related to increased anti-Asian attitudes. Finally, across model specifications, anti-Asian attitudes robustly increase the probability of voting for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Democrats with highly anti-Asian attitudes are nearly as likely as Republicans to vote for Trump, weakening the effect of partisanship on vote choice. This research suggests that the pandemic is exacerbating social inequalities in the U.S. in part through shifting racial attitudes – and with political consequences.

Understanding Preferences for Comprehensive Electoral Reform in the United States

AbstractObjectiveThe aim of this study is to examine whether Americans have a latent attitude toward comprehensive electoral reform the determinants of this attitude.MethodsThe article creates and validates an index of election reform attitudes; examines the independent and interactive roles of partisanship, political interest, electoral fortunes, and satisfaction with democracy on these attitudes.ResultsWhile a majority of Americans favor comprehensive election reform, this desire is strongest among Democrats, independents, people who feel they regularly lose in elections, and individuals who are dissatisfied with democracy, with no independent effect of political interest. Multivariate results find the effect of partisanship is conditioned by whether the respondent feels they generally win or lose in elections and satisfaction with democracy. Partisanship also interacts with political interest. More interested Democrats (Republicans) are more (less) supportive of comprehensive reform. Independents who are electoral losers or dissatisfied with government strongly favor election reform and resemble Democrats, while independents who feel they regularly win or are more satisfied are more opposed and resemble Republicans.ConclusionTwo‐thirds of Americans favor modernizing and updating U.S. election laws, but these attitudes are colored by partisanship, with evidence suggesting both elite messaging and expected electoral advantage as potential influences. Additionally, asymmetric partisan interactive effects are uncovered.