Partisan Cues Research Articles

Generating Support for a Hypothetical War: Presidential Cues and Justifications

ObjectiveSupport for wars that involve the United States typically divides by party identification among American voters, leading many scholars to believe that voters need only a partisan cue to go along with war. However, presidents do not endorse war in isolation; instead, they justify it with a variety of reasons ranging from minimal to extensive. Causally identifying these factors—partisan cues and justifications—can be challenging because (1) both occur simultaneously and (2) measured opinion on war usually occurs after the public has been exposed to both.MethodThis study leverages experimental evidence that randomizes presidential cues (an actual sitting president) and justifications about a hypothetical (and unnecessary) war in which elites have not staked out positions.ResultsResults show that a presidential endorsement alone does not generate support for a hypothetical war, but the inclusion of a justification, even one that is minimal, can increase support for war and improve presidential approval. Overall support still remains low for a hypothetical war and is concentrated among in‐partisans.ConclusionThese results imply that a segment of the American public will go along with war, but the reach is limited to their own party.

Understanding Partisan Cue Receptivity: Tests of Predictions from the Bounded Rationality and Expressive Utility Perspectives

Why do citizens rely on partisan cues when forming political judgments? We assess the relative importance of two motives for partisan cue-following using a series of survey experiments. We find no support for the bounded rationality hypothesis that cue receptivity is highest among citizens with low cognitive resources. Meanwhile, we find mixed support for the expressive utility hypothesis that cue receptivity is highest among people with both a strong partisan social identification and high cognitive resources. The strength of this latter evidence varies across studies, cognitive resource measures, and cue condition comparisons. The results suggest that partisan cue receptivity more often involves an effort to harness cognitive resources for the goal of identity expression than an effort to compensate for low cognitive resources.

Ten Years of Messaging about the Affordable Care Act in Advertising and News Media: Lessons for Policy and Politics.

Messaging about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has seemingly produced a variety of outcomes: millions of Americans gained access to health insurance, yet much of the US public remains confused about major components of the law, and there remain stark and persistent political divides in support of the law. Our analysis of the volume and content of ACA-related media (including both ads and news) helps explain these phenomena, with three conclusions. First, the information environment around the ACA has been complex and competitive, with messaging originating from diverse sponsors with multiple objectives. Second, partisan cues in news and political ads are abundant, likely contributing to the crystallized politically polarized opinion about the law. Third, partisan discussions of the ACA in political ads have shifted in volume, direction, and tone over the decade, presenting divergent views regarding which party is accountable for the law's successes (or failures). We offer evidence for each of these conclusions from longitudinal analyses of the volume and content of ACA messaging, also referencing studies that have linked these messages to attitudes and behavior. We conclude with implications for health communication, political science, and the future outlook for health reform.

Do Gender Cues from Images Supersede Partisan Cues Conveyed via Text? Eye Movements Reveal Political Stereotyping in Multimodal Information Environments

ABSTRACT An important feature of the information environment is its multimodal nature. In politics, people encounter representations of political candidates that combine images and text. Among the most prominent pieces of information people encounter are a candidate’s gender, obtained from images of the candidate’s face, and the candidate’s partisan identification, often represented as text. This feature of the environment is important given previous work showing that individuals infer gender categories from faces rapidly and effortlessly. In this study (N = 113), we use eye movements to determine how individuals assign stereotypical policy positions to candidates in an environment in which photos of candidates’ faces are paired with labels of their partisan IDs. We find that politically-knowledgeable individuals are more likely to use partisan- than gender-based stereotypes. In contrast, political novices did not prioritize one type of stereotype over the other. Our findings have implications for understanding how individuals make political evaluations in multimodal settings and show the advantages of measuring eye movements when studying stereotyping in multimodal environments.

The Effect of Partisan Cues on Support for Solar and Wind Energy in the United States

ObjectivesOverall support for renewable energy is quite strong in the United States. With such high support, the gap between Republicans and Democrats is quite small. Despite such a narrow gap between Republicans and Democrats, the rhetoric spoken about renewable energy by high‐profile Republicans and Democrats is contradictory. This study tests how high‐profile partisan leaders impact an individual's support for renewable energy policy.MethodsI examine support for solar and wind policy for 1,317 adults throughout the United States. Ordinal regression models are used to examine the influence of high‐profile partisan figures net of political affiliation, social background, and value orientations.ResultsThose who had favorable impressions of Representative Ocasio‐Cortez and rated high for egoistic and biospheric values had higher levels of support for renewable energy. Those who had favorable impressions of President Trump, were older, and white had lower levels of support for renewable energy.ConclusionsThe traditional divide between Democrats and Republicans that exists with respect to environmental concern is not as large for renewable energy support. Instead, cues from highly engaged partisan elites can have an impact on people's, particularly their supporters, perceptions and support of renewable energy.

Framing Automatic Voter Registration: Partisanship and Public Understanding of Automatic Voter Registration

Automatic voter registration (AVR) is a recent innovation in voter registration in the United States, passed by 18 states plus DC in the last 4 years. AVR has generally escaped partisan polarization about election reform, having passed in Republican and Democratic controlled states. Using a survey experiment in the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we investigate effects of source cues about support of AVR from different party elites and from election administrators on the public’s expectations about AVR’s impact on turnout, voter fraud, fairness, and election problems. Our experimental results show an asymmetric partisan effect. When AVR is endorsed by Democratic leaders, Republicans (and independents) expect AVR to reduce the fairness and legitimacy of elections, while Democrats are generally resistant to partisan cues.

Well, you’re the expert: how signals of source expertise help mitigate partisan bias

ABSTRACT Using low information rationality, citizens can compensate for their lack of political knowledge by turning to experts to help interpret and economize information. However, citizens must navigate a political media environment that is oversaturated with unqualified sources and competing cues, leading some scholars to question whether individuals are willing or able to utilize low-information rationality effectively. Much prior work focuses on partisan motivated reasoning, asserting that the influence of partisanship overwhelms that of other relevant informational cues. This is refuted by a relatively smaller subset of works, finding that the influence of partisanship is often diminished by contextual cues. I address this debate with two experimental designs that place source cues in a competing context by simultaneously manipulating expertise-related cues and partisan cues. I find that individuals do take source expertise and credibility into account, even when confronted with competing partisan source cues, helping to somewhat mitigate partisan biases.

Populism and Political Knowledge: The United States in Comparative Perspective

This article addresses the link between political knowledge and populist attitudes in the United States (US) in comparative perspective. At the beginning of the new decade, populism in the US is associated with support for the Republican party and Donald Trump in particular, and that is how I address it here. Using secondary data from a number of related studies, we find that, overall, support for Trump is not only negatively related to political knowledge, but also to other factors that make his supporters unaware of their being misinformed. This is because, more than for others, partisan cues serve them as a basis for their factual beliefs about political actors and events and assessments of the beliefs of others. While political knowledge has long been comparatively low in the US, as I show in the early part of the article, the relationship between misinformation and populism (i.e., support for Trump) is seen as a new and especially worrisome element. In the concluding section I address what, if anything, could be done to address this situation.

Inequality and Democratic Support in Indonesia

Indonesia is a country of significant inequalities, but we know little about how Indonesians feel about the gap between rich and poor. Comparative research suggests that negative perceptions of inequality can erode public support for democratic institutions. Using survey data, we explore the relationship between inequality and support for democracy in Indonesia. We find Indonesians are divided in their beliefs about income distribution. But this variation is not determined by actual levels of inequality around the country, nor by people's own economic situation; instead, political preferences and partisan biases are what matter most. Beliefs about inequality in Indonesia have become increasingly partisan over the course of the Jokowi presidency: supporters of the political opposition are far more likely to view the income gap as unfair, while supporters of the incumbent president tend to disagree—but they disagree much more when prompted by partisan cues. We also find that Indonesians who believe socio-economic inequality is unjust are more likely to hold negative attitudes toward democracy. We trace both trends back to populist campaigns and the increasingly polarized ideological competition that marked the country's recent elections. The shift toward more partisan politics in contemporary Indonesia has, we argue, consequences for how voters perceive inequality and how they feel about the democratic status quo.

Positivity and Negativity Dominance in Citizen Assessments of Intergovernmental Sustainability Performance

AbstractUnderstanding how the public assesses the performance of complex, intergovernmental efforts such as sustainability is critical for understanding both managerial decision-making and institutional design. Drawing from the performance and federalism literature, this study investigates the role that distinctive elements of negativity bias play in citizen assessments of intergovernmental performance. In three survey experiments, this study exploits a well-known intergovernmental initiative to explore the effects of episodic performance information on citizen support for varying sustainability-related activities. Two inter-related research questions are addressed. First, does the positive or negative valence of citizen performance assessments vary with the type and scope of activity? Second, does positive or negative performance information tend to dominate in more realistic scenarios in which both types of stimuli interact? The results advance theoretical understanding of public performance with evidence that the type of activity can influence citizen assessments both positively and negatively. Additionally, partisan cues can overwhelm otherwise positive views of performance in some contexts, a concept described in the psychology literature as negativity dominance. The findings add important insights by showing that biased reasoning of citizens is not just a blanket affective association with constant treatment effects across any type of governmental effort, but is contingent on both the activity and political context.

French attitudes on climate change, carbon taxation and other climate policies

This paper aims to assess the prospects for French climate policies after the Yellow Vests crisis halted the planned increase in the carbon tax. From a large representative survey, we elicit knowledge, perceptions and values over climate change, we examine opinions relative to carbon taxation, and we assess support for other climate policies. Specific attention is given to the link between perceptions of climate change and attitudes towards policies. The paper also studies in detail the determinants of attitudes in terms of political and socio-demographic variables. Among many results, we find limited knowledge but high concern for climate change. We also document a large rejection of the carbon tax but majority support for stricter norms and green investments, and reveal the rationales behind these preferences. Our study entails policy recommendations, such as an information campaign on climate change. Indeed, we find that climate awareness increases support for climate policies but no evidence for the formation of opinions through partisan cues as in the US, suggesting that better access to science could foster support for climate policies.

The Limits of Partisan Loyalty

While partisan cues tend to dominate political choice, prior work shows that competing information can rival the effects of partisanship if it relates to salient political issues. But what are the limits of partisan loyalty? How much electoral leeway do co-partisan candidates have to deviate from the party line on important issues? We answer this question using conjoint survey experiments that characterize the role of partisanship relative to issues. We demonstrate a pattern of conditional party loyalty. Partisanship dominates electoral choice when elections center on low-salience issues. But while partisan loyalty is strong, it is finite: the average voter is more likely than not to vote for the co-partisan candidate until that candidate takes dissonant stances on four or more salient issues. These findings illuminate when and why partisanship fails to dominate political choice. They also suggest that, on many issues, public opinion minimally constrains politicians.

When ethnic prejudice is political: an experiment in beliefs and hostility toward immigrant out-groups in Italy

AbstractWhen the immigration issue has been strongly politicized, prejudice toward minority out-groups can be profoundly imbued with politics, to the point that citizen responses to partisan cues about immigrants tend to operate on the basis of a ‘political sympathy/antipathy bias’. This article demonstrates that there is a direct causal relation between the nature (i.e. contents and sources) of political communication over immigrants and voters' responses. Drawing on an experimental design based on ITANES (Italian National Election Studies) 2018 election survey data, it isolates the effect that the voters' ideology and party alignments, as well as the partisan source of a message, exert on manifestations of ethnic prejudice, operationalized as the refusal to accept a plausibile and counter-stereotypical statement about immigrants. It concludes that even a mere symbolic change in communication by those party actors (i.e. the League) which ‘own’ the issue would suffice to attenuate hostility toward out-groups, to the extent that it results from sustained partisan rhetoric and mobilization.

An uninformed electorate: identity-motivated elaboration, partisan cues, and learning

ABSTRACTA deliberative democracy is reliant on an informed electorate discussing issues and presenting persuasive arguments. Individuals acquire information from exposure to political messages. Partisan cues, however, undermine learning outcomes. The current study experimentally examines the social cognitive processes that underlie this learning process. Integrating the social identity theory, elaboration likelihood model, and the theory of motivated reasoning to construct the theoretical concept of identity-motivated elaboration, the results indicate that partisan social identities motivate biased processing of new information, which subsequently influences the valence of elaboration. Positively and negatively valenced elaboration are situated as mediating variables in the structural model, which predicts learning from a persuasive political message. The current study extends the partisan social identity hypothesis to the elaborative and learning outcomes of political messages.

Socialization, Rationality, and Age: Generational Gaps and the Attitudes toward the Chechen War in Russia

In this article, I focus on the factor of age as a determinant of individual support for the use of force by the government. I argue that socialization theory, as a key conceptual frame, should be supplemented by rational choice explanations for understanding individual preferences more fully. Employing survey data on the Chechen conflict, I investigate generational gaps in Russia regarding the government's use of force, and the form those gaps take. Empirically, I substantiate a theoretical claim that several generations exist in Russia, each with its own attitudes and beliefs, including the so‐called “second edition of the Decembrists,” “the people of the ‘60s,” “the people of the ‘70s,” “the generation of perestroika,” “the disappointed generation,” and a “lost generation/mega‐consumers.” I find strong, albeit surprising, evidence of a generational gap in Russia, with respondents born in different time periods, especially “the ‘60s people” and “mega‐consumers” expressing variable attitudes toward the Chechnya conflict.Related ArticlesBrader, Ted A., and Joshua A. Tucker. 2009. “What's Left Behind When the Party's Over: Survey Experiments on the Effects of Partisan Cues in Putin's Russia.” Politics & Policy 37 (4): 843‐868. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2009.00201.xSmyth, Regina. 2014. “The Putin Factor: Personalism, Protest, and Regime Stability in Russia.” Politics & Policy 42 (4): 567‐592. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12080Stegmaier, Mary A., and Gwyn Erb. 2008. “Gender and Generation Gaps in Russian Economic Values during the Yeltsin Years.” Politics & Policy 33 (3): 416‐443. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2005.tb00802.x

Communicating policy information in a partisan environment: the importance of causal policy narratives in political persuasion

ABSTRACT Public opinion is frequently formed in an environment of both partisan signals and other types of policy information. How do people form opinions in such an environment? Much of the literature suggests that most people simply align their opinions with those of their party. We examine a condition under which people may rely instead on a more normatively defensible criterion: policy information. We argue that what people want in terms of policy instruments are effective tools for achieving their desired end-state. When information clearly communicates that a policy will lead to a desirable outcome, we hypothesize that it will be persuasive even in a context where party leaders provide countervailing signals. In two experimental studies, we find support for this hypothesis, and we find some evidence that such information also reduces reliance on partisan cues. We show that causal narratives are central to the opinion formation process and that communicating this information can improve the quality of public opinion.

The electoral implications of politically irrelevant cues under demanding electoral systems

AbstractCognitively demanding electoral systems increase the chance that voters make their choices based on politically irrelevant cues. To illustrate this argument, I analyze the effect of candidate name complexity—a visual cue that contains no politically meaningful information—in Japan, where voters need to write their preferred candidate's name on a blank ballot paper. I find that when electoral systems require voters to weigh a large number of candidates and simultaneously reduce the usefulness of partisan cues, candidates with more complex names tend to receive lower vote shares. By contrast, under less cognitively demanding systems, candidate name complexity has no effect on election outcomes. These findings have important implications for the debate on the “best” electoral system design.

Is There a Trump Effect? An Experiment on Political Polarization and Audience Costs

Does President Trump face domestic costs for foreign policy inconsistency? Will co-partisans and opposition-partisans equally punish Donald Trump for issuing flippant international threats and backing down? While the president said he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing voters, the literature consistently shows that individuals, regardless of partisanship, disapprove of leaders who jeopardize the country’s reputation for credibility and resolve. Given the atypical nature of the Trump presidency, and the severe partisan polarization surrounding it, we investigate whether the logic of audience costs still applies in the Trump era. Using a unique experiment fielded during the 2016 presidential transition, we show that Republicans and Democrats impose equal audience costs on President Trump. And by varying the leader’s identity, between Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and “The President,” we demonstrate that the public adheres to a non-partisan logic in punishing leaders who renege on threats. Yet we also find Presidents Trump and Obama can reduce the magnitude of audience costs by justifying backing down as being “in America’s interest.” Even Democrats, despite their doubts of Donald Trump’s credibility, accept such justifications. Our findings encourage further exploration of partisan cues, leader-level attributes, and leader-level reputations.

Partisan cues and internet memes: early evidence for motivated skepticism in audience message processing of spreadable political media

ABSTRACT Internet memes represent fundamental practices underlying much of digitally mediated conversation in the current participatory media environment, increasingly playing a prominent role in political contexts online. At the same time, memes’ fleeting nature makes them easily dismissed as insignificant media. To date, there is little published research that focuses on memes from the audience perspective. This study responds to calls to establish effects of political internet memes by examining the role of partisan cues in audience assessment of political internet memes’ message quality. An online quasi-experiment (N = 633) was conducted to assess perceptions of political memes’ message effectiveness and argument quality. The results reveal that internet memes are subject to biased cognitive processing, specifically selective judgment or motivated skepticism. These findings suggest that despite their fleeting nature, political internet memes might be a vehicle for political messages that contribute to a polarized media environment. Suggestions for future research are presented.

Tracing the Boundaries of Motivated Reasoning: How Deliberative Minipublics Can Improve Voter Knowledge

A large body of work shows that reasoning motivated by partisan cues and prior attitudes leads to unreflective decisions and disparities in empirical beliefs across groups. Surprisingly little research, however, has tested the limits of motivated reasoning. We argue that the publicly circulated findings of deliberative minipublics can spark a more reflective motivation in voters when these bodies provide policy‐relevant factual information. To test that proposition, we conducted a survey experiment using information generated by one such minipublic during an election. Results showed that exposure to the minipublic's findings improved the accuracy of voters' empirical beliefs regarding a ballot proposition on the regulation of genetically modified seeds. This treatment effect transcended voters' partisan identities and prior environmental attitudes. In some instances, the respondents showing the greatest knowledge gains were those who a directional motivated‐reasoning account would have expected to resist the treatment most effectively, owing to party identity or prior attitudes.