Partisan Identification Research Articles

The Preparedness Paradox in Climate Attitudes: Democrats Worry, Republicans Prepare

ABSTRACT Political partisanship is one of the strongest correlates of climate change attitudes in the United States, with Democrats expressing greater concern than Republicans. As the climate crisis progresses, surveys increasingly examine preparedness for environmental emergencies, instead of climate attitudes alone. Does partisan identification associate with environmental preparedness actions as it does other climate attitude measures? We find a paradox: Republicans are more likely to say they have taken preparedness actions than Democrats. We replicate this finding in three survey samples (n = 1,053; n = 1,201; n = 2,318) and provide two sociological explanations. Theoretically, a culture of emergency preparedness integrated with conservative belief systems could strengthen the partisanship association, especially if preparedness is not closely tied to other climate attitudes. Empirically, household income is associated with specific types of preparedness actions, possibly introducing bias based on social class. We discuss the importance of measuring climate preparedness for the future of climate opinion research and climate policy and call for preparedness measures that are applicable to the general population.

Narrow Margins and Misinformation: The Impact of Sharing Fake News in Close Contests

This study investigates the impact of candidates disseminating fake news on voter behavior and electoral outcomes in highly competitive, partisan races. While the effects of fake news on electoral outcomes have been studied, research has yet to examine the impact of candidates’ strategic use of fake news in elections where it may have the greatest impact—close races. This research explores whether the use of fake news influences voter support, particularly among independent voters, in tightly contested elections. Through a conjoint survey experiment involving participants from Amazon MTurk, this study analyzes how variables such as race competitiveness, perceived risk of alienating independents, and the presence of partisan labels affect voter responses to candidates who spread misinformation. The findings indicate that while the competitiveness of a race does not significantly enhance support for candidates sharing fake news, the presence of partisan labels does. These results suggest that voter behavior in response to fake news is more closely tied to partisan identity than to strategic electoral considerations. This study highlights the complex dynamics of misinformation in electoral contexts and its implications for democratic processes.

Political identity and risk politics: Evidence from a pandemic.

The way political identity serves as a foundation for political polarization in the United States permits elites to extend conflict rapidly to new issue areas. Further, the types of cognitive mechanisms and shortcuts used in the politically polarized information environment are similar to some of those used in risk perception. Consequently, political elites may easily create partisan risk positions, largely through politically focused social amplification of risk. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a natural experiment for testing predictions about such risk politics. We asked questions about pandemic-related views, behaviors, and policies at the outset of the pandemic in April 2020 and again in September 2020 via public opinion surveys. Our data and analyses focus primarily on a single state, with some analysis extended to four states. We begin by demonstrating strong linkages between political partisan identification on the one hand and support for co-partisan elites, use of partisan information sources, and support for co-partisan policies on the other hand. We then find evidence that pandemic risk positions correspond with partisan information sources and find support for a mechanism involving partisan-tinted evaluation of elite cues. Partisan risk positions quickly became part of the larger polarized structure of political support and views. Finally, our evidence shows on the balance that partisan risk positions related to the pandemic coalesced and strengthened over time. Overall, while self-identified Democrats consistently viewed the coronavirus as the primary threat, self-identified Republicans quickly pivoted toward threats to their freedoms and to the economy.

Polarization versus professionalism: military and civilian views on the domestic use of the military

Abstract Scholars and policymakers warn that with rising affective polarization, politicians will find support from the public and permission from military professionals to use military force to selectively crack down on political opponents. We test these claims by conducting parallel survey experiments among the US public and mid-career military officers. We ask about two hypothetical scenarios of domestic partisan unrest, randomly assigning the partisan identity of protesters. Surprisingly, we find widespread public support for deploying the military and no significant partisanship effects. Meanwhile, military officers were very resistant to deploying the military, with nearly 75 percent opposed in any scenario. In short, there is little evidence that public polarization threatens to escalate domestic disputes, and strong evidence for military opposition.

The Roles of Identity- and Belief-Driven Motivated Reasoning and Source Credibility in Persuasion on Climate Change Policy

Developing effective messages to promote climate action requires an understanding of how these messages are processed by different groups. Though the influence of partisan identity on this processing is well established, much less is known about the role of preexisting climate beliefs. Furthermore, scholars have recently raised the possibility that what appear to be partisan effects on message judgments may simply be byproducts of accuracy-driven differences in perceived source credibility. Three online experiments revealed evidence that speaks to these conversations. The results show that message source, political affiliation, and preexisting climate beliefs combine nonadditively to affect persuasion. Furthermore, their effects are mediated by perceived source credibility. However, the evidence also suggests that this pattern emerged not because accuracy goals drive different perceptions of credibility but because credibility judgments are equally susceptible to directional motivated reasoning.

Individual Electoral Competitiveness: Undecided voters, complex choice environments and lower turnout

The number of citizens that are undecided in their vote choice has risen in Western democracies. Polling in Britain shows that a significant proportion of the population do not know who they will vote for. Against a backdrop of partisan dealignment and party system fragmentation, there are more parties on the ballot and more citizens ‘free to choose’. Partisanship continues to be important for voting and lacking an identity is a predictor of aggregate voter volatility. A growing literature conceptualises this availability of voters as individual-level electoral competitiveness, stating that undecided citizens are subject to high levels of competition for their vote. I use this framework and apply theory from the decisionmaking literature to offer why these conditions may depress turnout. I construct a measure of undecided voters who are ‘in competition’ and show that this accounts for 40% of the British Election Study Internet Panel respondents. I demonstrate that those who are in competition are less likely to vote. They are more often those without a partisan identity and those who pay less attention to politics, but being in competition is not related to constituency marginality. The results help explain a key determinant of abstention in British elections and suggest low levels of participation may be due to complex choice environments and citizen indecision. However, they provide a positive outlook for pluralistic democracy as voters do deliberate between the party perspectives on offer.

I’m a Survivor: Political Dynamics in Bureaucratic Elites’ Partisan Identification

This article challenges the common assumption that the partisan identification of bureaucratic elites is fixed over time. Building on principal-agent and organization theory, we hypothesize that bureaucratic elites may respond to political turnover by adjusting their partisan identification toward that of their (new) elected principals. We test this prediction using data from the American State Administrators Project (ASAP) over the 1964–2008 period, which allows us to study the same US agency leaders (N=951 individuals) before and after partisan shifts in their agency’s elected principals. We find significant evidence that agency leaders remaining in office following a shift in the party in power on average reorient their partisan identity in response to such turnover events. These adjustments are stronger for agency leaders directly appointed by, or in more frequent contact with, their elected principals. Our results suggest a malleability of partisanship seldom attributed to bureaucratic elites in public and academic discourse.

When Politics Override Place: How Political Affiliation Supersedes Rural Identity

How does partisan identity impact rural identity? While prior research has found associations between rural identity and partisanship, few studies experimentally validate this relationship. Using two separate experiments–a partisan prime and a conjoint–we explore the relationship between rural identity and partisan identity to show that when partisan identity is in conflict with rural identity, the partisan identity dominates. Our findings indicate that the relationship between partisan identity and rural identity is asymmetrical for Democrats and Republicans. For Republicans, rural identity often reinforces their partisan identity. However, for Democrats, rural identity is subordinate to their partisan identity. That is, Democrats weaken their rural identity when primed to think about their partisan identity and Democrats’ partisan identity supersedes the expression of a rural identity when rating hypothetical candidates. Overall, when rural and small town Democrats are thinking in a partisan mindset, their rural identity becomes less salient.

Are municipal politicians ideological moderates?

For more than a century, many practitioners and researchers have argued that municipal politicians are more ideologically moderate – that is, closer to the centre of a unidimensional left-right ideological scale – than their national counterparts. Testing this claim requires direct comparison of politicians who represent similar constituents but who are elected at different levels of government, but comparative data of this sort are rarely available. Here, I use new data from surveys of Canadian municipal, provincial, and federal politicians to rigorously test the “municipal moderation” thesis. Comparing politicians' symbolic ideological self-understandings N≈3,000 and their latent policy ideologies N≈775, I find strong evidence that municipal politicians think of themselves as more ideologically moderate, but are not more moderate in their policy beliefs. Further, I leverage variation in the partisan identities of Canadian municipal politicians to show that differences in ideological moderation across levels of government disappear when we remove municipal non-partisans from the analysis. My results reinforce the view that municipal politicians hold non-ideological cultural norms but are embedded in an ideological electoral and policymaking context. My analysis also illustrates the analytical potential for “vertical” rather than “horizontal” comparative research designs.

Partisans process policy-based and identity-based messages using dissociable neural systems.

Political partisanship is often conceived as a lens through which people view politics. Behavioral research has distinguished two types of "partisan lenses"-policy-based and identity-based-that may influence peoples' perception of political events. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms through which partisan discourse appealing to policy beliefs or targeting partisan identities operate within individuals. We addressed this question by collecting neuroimaging data while participants watched videos of speakers expressing partisan views. A "partisan lens effect" was identified as the difference in neural synchrony between each participant's brain response and that of their partisan ingroup vs. outgroup. When processing policy-based messaging, a partisan lens effect was observed in socio-political reasoning and affective responding brain regions. When processing negative identity-based attacks, a partisan lens effect was observed in mentalizing and affective responding brain regions. These data suggest that the processing of political discourse that appeals to different forms of partisanship is supported by related but distinguishable neural-and therefore psychological-mechanisms, which may have implications for how we characterize partisanship and ameliorate its deleterious impacts.

On Political Misogyny

Many political scientists hold that vitriolic speech against high-profile women has only negligible effects on other women in politics. They also contend that the prevalence of such vitriol is consistent with gender bias having no significant negative impact on most women in politics. This article argues that these sanguine positions rest on inadequate and untested assumptions regarding misogyny, and the role it plays in politics. In the service of putting us in a position to test the relationship between gendered discourse in particular elections and the structural obstacles faced by women in politics, this article develops a conceptualization of political misogyny: nasty claim-making that instills repugnant connotations into women’s collective political identities (e.g., their partisan identities). Attention is also paid to how political misogyny can distribute hatred burdens disproportionately among different groups of women.

The N400 effect captures nuances in implicit political preferences

We conducted a study in San Antonio, Texas, in the weeks preceding the 2022 state Governor election to determine if implicit or explicit measures of political preference could predict voter behavior. We adapted an established event-related potential (ERP) paradigm showing political statements to participants one word at the time where the last word made the statement pro-Republican or pro-Democratic. Our sample of college students included decided and undecided voters, and was reflective of the demographic make-up of south-central Texas. Our implicit measures were an established authoritarianism scale and the N400 effect to the sentence-final word. The N400 is an ERP to any stimulus that engages semantic memory and has been shown to measure implicit disagreement with political statements. Explicit measures of political preference and authoritarianism were predictive of vote choice. The expected N400 effect was found for Democratic voters, with larger amplitude to pro-Republican than pro-Democratic statements. Surprisingly, decided Republican voters showed no difference in N400 responses to pro-Republican and pro-Democratic statements and there was no group difference in the N400 effect. In turn, the N400 was not predictive of voter behavior. We argue that the N400 effect reflected individual political preferences, but that ultimately voter behavior aligned with partisan identity.

Partisan Identification of Naturalized Americans

Partisan Identification of Naturalized Americans

Explaining Mainstream News Media Use in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Roles of Partisanship, Perceptions of Threat, Negative Emotions, and News Media Trust

ABSTRACT As the COVID-19 pandemic struck the United States amid the 2020 presidential election campaign, the public health crisis rapidly developed into a polarizing political issue. Within the context of a politicized public health crisis, efforts to deepen a scholarly understanding of how people’s information-seeking behaviors can be understood in relation to partisanship bear timely importance. In this light, this research aims to explore the relationship between partisanship and mainstream news media use in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study examines the role of perceived threat, negative emotions, and news media trust for helping to explain mainstream news media use. Analyses of data from a survey, conducted during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic (N = 546), confirm that perceptions of threat, along with negative emotions stemming from perceived threat, play a mediating role between partisan identification and mainstream news media use. Moreover, this research also demonstrates that the mediated relationship between these factors varies, depending on people’s perceptions of the news media’s trustworthiness. The findings of the study contribute to deepening scholarly understanding of media consumption behaviors during times of a politicized public health crisis.

Elite Cueing, Gender, and the Partisan Gap in Environmental Support

ABSTRACT This study extends research on how political and social contexts mediate the relationship between men’s and women’s political identities and their support for the environment. Our test consists of a 3 × 2 factorial survey experiment that interacts an individual’s partisan identity with three conditions modeling elite support for federal spending to protect the environment. Democrats demonstrate consistently high rates of support regardless of legislative sponsorship. Among Republicans, when Democratic legislators sponsor environmental legislation, support drops about 18% compared to conditions where a bipartisan group sponsors legislation. Support among Republican women, however, remains relatively stable across experimental conditions. Republican variations in support are almost entirely attributable to declines in support among Republican men, whose support drops an average of 24% when Democratic legislators sponsor legislation. In conclusion, intraparty gender differences in opinions and support should be considered more broadly, especially when examining polarized public issues.

The Politics of the Gender Gap in COVID-19: Partisanship, Health Behavior, and Policy Preferences in the United States

Several studies demonstrate gender and partisan differences among Americans in COVID-19 socioeconomic consequences, attitudes, and behaviors. The authors of this study use six waves of panel survey data to explore the intersection of gender and party across COVID-19 mitigation behaviors, concerns, and policy preferences. The authors observe small gender gaps on several measures; however, partisan differences are larger than gender differences when considering the interaction between gender and partisanship. Democratic women are more similar to Democratic men on these measures than to Republican women. On virtually all measures, Republican women report lower levels of mitigation behaviors, worries, and support for expansive government policies compared to Democratic women and men. Analyzing the interaction of gender and partisanship illuminates how individuals navigated the pandemic with respect to identity factors that often pull in different directions. These findings suggest that one's partisan identity is more consequential than gender when it comes to COVID behaviors, concerns, and policy preferences.

Public Attitudes, Inequities, and Polarization in the Launch of the 988 Lifeline

Context: To address the considerable burden of mental health need in the United States, Congress passed the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act in 2020. The act rebranded the national suicide prevention lifeline as 988, a three-digit number akin to 911 for individuals to call in the case of a mental health emergency. Surprisingly little is known about American attitudes toward this new lifeline. Methods: The authors use a demographically representative survey of 5,482 US adults conducted June 24–28, 2022, to examine the influence of mental health status, partisan identification, and demographic characteristics on public awareness of the new 988 lifeline, public support for the lifeline, and intention to use it. Findings: The authors find that while only a quarter of Americans are aware of the lifeline, support for the 988 lifeline is widespread, with more than 75% of Americans indicating they would be likely to use the new number if needed. The authors identify key disparities in awareness, support, and intended use, with Republicans, individuals with low socioeconomic status, and Blacks less supportive of the 988 lifeline and in some cases less likely to use it. Conclusions: The results point to the need for additional interventions that increase public awareness of 988 and reduce disparities in program knowledge, support, and intention to use.

Mental Health and U.S. Attitudes Toward Social Determinants of Health Policies

IntroductionResearch has suggested that individual health may influence policy attitudes, yet the relationship between mental health and policy support is understudied. Clarifying this relationship may help inform policies that can improve population mental health. To address this gap, this study measures national support for five social determinants of health policy priorities and their relation to mental health and political affiliation. MethodsThis study assessed support for five policy priorities related to the social determinants of health using a nationally representative survey of US adults (n = 2,430) conducted in March - April 2023. Logistic regression was used to estimate the predicted probability of identifying each priority as important, test differences in support by self-rated mental health, and evaluate whether partisanship modified these relationships. Analyses were conducted in 2023. ResultsThe majority of US adults, across partisan identities, supported five policy priorities related to improving the economy (84%), healthcare affordability (77%), improving K-12 education (76%), housing affordability (68%), and childcare affordability (61%). Worse mental health predicted significantly greater support for addressing housing affordability (73.9% vs. 66.2%), and partisanship modified the relationship between mental health and support for improving the economy, improving K-12 education, and housing affordability. ConclusionsIn 2023, there was substantial bipartisan support for federal policy action to address the social determinants of health, and worse mental health was related to greater policy support, particularly among Democrats. Federal policymakers have a broad consensus to take action to address the social determinants of health, which may improve population mental health.

Partisan and/or Gender Homophily: The Influence of Social Identity-Based Elaboration on Political Candidate Evaluation

Employing social identity theory, this study explores the interaction of gender and party variables in political elections. We used an experimental approach with a two (man/woman) x two (Republican/Democrat) design, in which participants viewed a political website, to assess the influence of shared and competing identities in candidate evaluations as well as the mechanisms of influence. Upholding previous findings, we found that a candidate’s partisan identity carried significantly more weight than their gender identity. Extending previous findings, results reveal that shared identities increase feelings of homophily, which biases elaboration about the candidate. This identity-biased elaboration influences attitudes and voting decisions.

The Rule of Law in Red and Blue: Affective Polarization and Support for Legal Institutions in the United States

A defining feature of democracies is an independent legal system, where elites and the public alike accept the broader legitimacy of its actions, even if they run counter to political preferences. Existing scholarship suggests that public support for rule of law institutions is rooted in perceptions of procedural fairness. However, amid increasing levels of affective polarization, we posit a partisan presidential heuristic wherein citizens’ views of legal institutions are influenced by their partisanship and signals from the president. Through multiple experiments, we demonstrate that support for two key institutions—the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice—is substantially derived from the intersection of one’s partisan identity and their partisan proximity to the president. These effects are strongest among respondents exhibiting high levels of affective partisanship. Our results suggest that in forming perceptions of the rule of law, partisan politics is increasingly competing with perceptions of procedural fairness, thereby subverting support for legal institutions in the United States.