Partisan Voters Research Articles

When the players make you hate the game: affective polarization and electoral confidence

ABSTRACT In this research note, I explore the extent to which affectively polarized voters drive winner and loser effects in electoral confidence. Using panel data from the ANES 2016–2020 Panel Sample, I present statistical evidence suggesting that those who were most likely to express a different level of electoral confidence in 2020 relative to 2016 were those who strongly “liked” a candidate while simultaneously strongly “disliking” that candidate’s opponent. To a lesser extent, those who were more polarized in their feelings towards the Democratic and Republican Parties were also more likely to exhibit a change in electoral confidence. Additionally, affective polarization towards the candidates appears to play a greater role in electoral confidence than affective polarization towards political parties for less partisan voters. Taken together, the evidence suggests that movement in electoral confidence is largely an emotional reaction to the election results. This research highlights the consequences of the broader shift to candidate-focused campaigning on electoral confidence in American elections.

Testing Partisan Elaborative Responses to Political Campaign Image Repair Strategies

ABSTRACT Political candidates can face scandals and crises which threaten their relationships with key voting publics. When faced with a reputational threat, political candidates attempt to repair their image. In the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker faced reputational threats to his image. This study employs an experimental design that compares partisan cognitive and affective responses to Herschel Walker’s actual image repair strategy employed on social media with one of five hypothetical responses constructed using the image repair typology. An elaborative theoretical lens is employed to test how different image repair responses are cognitively processed by partisan voters and affectively evaluated. Results showed that partisans engaged in differing levels of valenced elaboration about Walker depending on the image repair response, and through this cognitive process subsequently evaluated his image differently. Findings revealed differences in how partisans elaborated upon Walker’s strategy of denial compared to alternative strategies such as mortification, transcendence, and corrective action. Theoretical and practical implications for political public relations are offered.

Voter Support for Policies Associated With Child Health as National Campaign Priorities

Policies that are associated with child health are rarely included in platforms of candidates for national political office. Candidates may underrecognize voter support for such priorities or perceive that such policy issues are not sufficiently divisive to appeal to partisan voters. Key policy questions associated with child health may be considered by the next Congress, including the consistency of Medicaid coverage across states and restoring the recently lapsed refundable child tax credit. To examine voter support for candidates regarding policies that are associated with child health. This nationally representative survey of registered US voters 18 years or older was conducted from March to April 2024 and included a survey-based randomized experiment to evaluate the association of message framing with voter support. Messages conveying distinct rationales for Medicaid reform and refundable child tax credit. Likely or definite support for candidates. In this sample (unweighted N = 2014; 1015 women [51.0%]), most respondents indicated they would likely or definitely vote for candidates who expressed strong support for all tested policies: extreme risk protection order (79.5%), school threat assessment (73.1%), expanded childcare (69.6%), refundable child tax credit (66.6%), federalization of Medicaid (66.0%), paid parental leave (65.5%), free school meals (65.6%), safe firearm storage and enforcement (62.9%), preventing Medicaid disenrollment for children younger than 6 years (61.9%), universal free preschool (61.6%), and summer nutrition programs (57.9%). More women than men expressed support for all tested policies. Strong majorities of Democrat and Independent voters would support candidates who endorsed child-focused policies; fewer than 50% of Republican voters expressed such support, except for the extreme risk protection order and school threat assessment. Variations in framing language regarding consistent Medicaid coverage across states were not associated with amplified or diminished voter support. Framing the refundable child tax credit as benefiting "hard-working" vs "low-income" families garnered significantly more support among men (67.0% vs 59.0%), privately insured individuals (72.0% vs 64.4%), and Republicans (54.6% vs 43.0%; all P < .05). The study results suggest that most voters favor candidates who strongly support policies that are associated with child health. Voter support differs substantively by gender and political party affiliation and may be associated with language choices in messaging about policy change.

Partisan Differences in Voters’ Desire for Punishment in Response to Politicians’ Moral Transgressions

Research shows that politicians are often not electorally punished for immoral behavior. Yet, voters may still desire to see politicians punished outside of the election context for committing moral transgressions. Moreover, these desires may be conditioned by the partisanship of the voter, the transgressor, and voters’ perceptions of moral violation severity. To examine such effects, we conduct a vignette study asking 2997 U. S. respondents to consider politicians’ moral violations. We randomly varied the moral principle violated (Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity, and a social norm violation) and the partisanship of the politician (Republic/Democrat/Nonpartisan). When voters perceive the severity of a moral violation to be low, Republicans express a stronger desire to punish than do Democrats. Republicans’ desire for punishment depends on the group of the transgressor, with higher levels of punitiveness desired for out-party transgressors than in-party. However, when voters perceive severity to be moderate or high, Democrats have the stronger desire to punish the politician involved, but they show no in-party bias. Across the moral violations presented, Republicans and Democrats differ in perceptions of severity of politicians’ immoral behavior. Results show partisan voters’ heterogeneity in punitiveness, with the relationship strongly mediated by perceived severity of the moral violation.

Social Media and the DIY Politics in Thailand's 2023 Election

This article argues that Thailand's 2023 parliamentary election was the first election in which social media played a decisive factor in the electoral outcomes. Prior to this election, social media was an important campaign tool, but it was unclear whether it made a difference in the electoral results. Based on our original post-election survey data (n = 1,249), social media was the most important media in governing vote choice. Social media was a crucial space for activation and conversion—motivating the undecided to become partisans and converting partisan voters to shift their allegiances. Thailand's 2023 election was also marked by a rise in the personalization of political campaigning, wherein citizens felt free to decide how and what their political participation looked like, and parties that encouraged inclusive and open engagement with politics were best poised to win in the electoral arena. Drawing on social network analysis of social media data, this article demonstrates how the Move Forward Party's (MFP) loosely structured and inclusive social media campaigns allowed both their candidates and supporters to mobilize individualized large-scale collective action, in contrast to their rivals who focused on traditional top-down style campaigning. Despite the MFP's winning social media campaigning that produced electoral victories, the party was unable to come to power due to an entrenched authoritarian political system designed to maintain the power of the country's autocratic elites. The Thai case demonstrates powerfully how autocrats might lose an election due to social media, yet still manage to hang on to power through entrenched authoritarian institutions.

Polarization All the Way Down: How Coverage of Elite and Partisan Polarization Spills Over to Perceptions of the U.S. Mass Public

ABSTRACT How do ordinary citizens perceive and respond to different kinds of political polarization in the U.S.? Recent work shows that people believe that the parties are intensely polarized but, in reality, the extent of polarization depends on whether we focus on political elites or the mass public. This paper reports results from two survey experiments with samples from Dynata and CloudResearch (total N = 2,940) exploring how people perceive ideological and affective polarization among (a) party elites, (b) partisan voters, and (c) ordinary Americans in the mass public. I show that participants believe that the public is both ideologically and affectively polarized, only marginally less than partisans and elites. I also find some evidence that news media creates perceptual spillover between elites, partisans, and the mass public: participants given information about (non)polarization for only one group nonetheless update their perceptions of all three groups in parallel. Given the dominance of information about elites and elite polarization in the U.S. media environment, I argue that top-down spillover from news stories about elites may help to explain why people think the public is more polarized than it really is.

Lying for votes

Lying for votes

Threat, voting and candidate support. The impact of mortality salience

IntroductionHow does threat motivate political choices? An extensive literature has noted the importance of threat in influencing political behavior. A growing literature in political psychology has used the concept of “mortality salience” to examine the role of existential threat in political decisions. Scholars have argued that inducing mortality salience by asking individuals to think about their own death should result in either reinforcement of their existing political worldview, a shift to a more politically conservative view, or support for a “status quo” option more generally.MethodsWe performed two survey experiments (N = 484 and 1514) manipulating mortality salience and candidate features (Exp. 2). Experiment 1 was performed one week before the 2016 US presidential election and utilized the varying features of the candidates. Experiment 2 manipulated features such as experience level (representing the status quo or change) and partisanship.ResultsWe find that mortality salience led to an increased likelihood of voting for Hillary Clinton, particularly for moderate and independent respondents. We also find that independent participants preferred the status quo candidate under mortality salience.DiscussionWe interpret the findings in both studies as supporting a connection between existential threat and preference for the status quo in psychological terms, at least for less partisan voters, rather than a conservative shift in ideological terms or a tendency to reinforce existing views.

Happy Winners, Sore Partisans? Political Trust, Partisanship, and the Populist Assault on Electoral Integrity in Mexico

Winning elections usually make partisan voters more politically satisfied and confident. However, if they voted for a president that actively undermines the legitimacy of democratic institutions, they will be compelled to accommodate their views and update their judgment on a selective basis. They will support the regime's performance and yet distrust the institutions denounced by the government. This claim is tested using data from a representative survey conducted in Mexico. In this country, the president is a populist leader who consistently denounces all constraints on the executive. In particular, the president frequently undermines the institutions safeguarding free and fair elections. The analysis reveals that the gap in political trust reflects the opposite reactions from partisan winners and losers to the executive's antagonizing behavior. Voters supporting the winning party are more satisfied with democracy. However, they are less likely to trust the integrity of elections than the partisan losers.

An information-based explanation for partisan media sorting

Partisan voters tend to seek political news from media sources that match their predispositions. Scholars and pundits often attribute this partisan media sorting to psychological biases, and they typically assume that it leads voters to make worse decisions at the ballot box. To reinterpret this evidence and provide an alternative explanation, we develop two formal models of media choice—one in which voters only want to hear good news about their party and another in which voters only care about making good electoral decisions. Both models predict partisan media sorting, so sorting does not constitute evidence that voters are poorly informed or that they are driven by psychological biases. However, the models do produce competing predictions about when voters will consume more or less news and about whether signals from the news should influence vote choices. Reassessing the empirical literature, we find some support for both explanations.

Mobilizing Peripheral Partisan Voters: A Field Experimental Analysis From Three California Congressional Election Campaigns

Since the early 2000s, an array of experimental research has demonstrated that face-to-face canvassing is the most effective form of get-out-the-vote campaigning. Recent scholarship, however, suggests that text messaging can also have powerful mobilization effects. Can the effects of text messaging match those of canvassing? We present a field experiment gauging the effects of text messaging, canvassing, mail, and phone calls among medium propensity evangelical Christian voters in three California battleground congressional districts for the 2018 midterm election. The results show significant turnout effects associated with texting as well as any form of outreach followed by a late-October text message. This challenges the widely held notion that personalized contacting is required to get voters to the polls; rather, we find that peripheral voters—often targeted by campaigns for mobilization—may be receptive to anonymous but timely outreach.

Partisan Polarization in Korea: Ideology, Perception, Affect, and Participation

While many people think that ideological conflict is one of the most serious problems in Korean society, previous studies find no strong evidence of ideological polarization. Have partisan voters been more ideologically divided over time in Korea? If not, is it just their perception on major political parties? Or, do partisans dislike each other more than before, so they look ideologically more polarized? Using the election survey data from the 17th -20th National Assembly Elections, we find that none of the three can explain the seemingly divided Korean society. As an alternative explanation, we show that the gap in political participation between partisans and nonpartisans has been greatly increasing over time. Since parties are likely to focus more on politically active voters, our finding implies that the ideological conflict is likely to worsen in the future.

Ingroup Bias, Partisanship, and Gendered Voting

This study uses a novel experimental approach to isolate “expressive” or “noninstrumental” payoffs to voting along identity lines, separating them from “substantive” motivations. Applying social identity theory to the case of gender in U.S. elections, the study answers the question: Do some men and women receive a purely expressive payoff from preferring same‐gender candidates? A series of experiments test whether a purely expressive payoff from voting along gender lines is stronger among certain voters. Employing a self‐affirmation treatment and measures of group‐identity attachment, as well as a voting vignette, the evidence shows that Republican men receive a purely expressive payoff from voting for male over female candidates. That is, Republican men’s preference for a male over a female candidate can be reduced by a self‐affirmation treatment that has subjects focus on their individuating characteristics, thereby temporarily “detaching” them from their group attachments. Women and Democratic men are not affected by the self‐affirmation treatment. This study deepens our understanding of voter gender bias in the United States, with a particular focus on the implications of ingroup bias among certain partisan voters for the supply of female candidates within party primary elections.

How Social Desirability Response Bias May Lead to an Overestimation of Obama-Trump Voters

Abstract In this research note, we argue that a segment of Trump voters may be motivated to demonstrate that they are not racially insensitive by saying they voted for Obama in 2012. As a result, what may appear as a substantial group of swing voters may be—in part—partisan voters who want to avoid perceptions of racial bias. Using data from a survey of a nationally representative nonprobability sample from YouGov, polling data from the 2016 election, and a survey experiment conducted with a convenience sample of American adults, we find that Obama-Trump voters score significantly higher on a social monitoring scale than others and that respondents are significantly more supportive of Trump when they are given the opportunity to mention who they voted for in 2012. The combination of results suggests that the number of Obama-Trump voters may be overestimated due to self-monitoring.

Talking Shops: The Effects of Caucus Discussion on Policy Coalitions

AbstractGroup discussion of legislation is a defining feature of parliaments and legislatures. However, there is little evidence that these conferences influence legislators' policy positions or the disposition of legislation. This article examines how, and to what extent, group discussion influences policy coalitions. It reports results from two field experiments in which state legislators spoke about randomly selected bills in a bipartisan caucus. Chosen bills received twice as much support from caucus members as unselected bills. Estimated effects are similar in magnitude within and across party lines. Discussion did not appear to affect bill‐level outcomes such as bill content or bill passage, but power limitations make studying such policy‐level outcomes infeasible. Qualitative data from the experiments suggest that reputation and reciprocity are key mechanisms underlying influence, but that partisan voters and media are obstacles to bipartisanship in a contemporary American legislature.

Guns for Votes: Wedge Politics in the Canadian Multiparty System

Abstract This article contributes to the emerging literature on wedge issues and on electoral strategies in multiparty electoral systems by studying the implementation and effectiveness of a concerted electoral communication strategy deployed by the Conservative party of Canada around the elimination of the gun registry, in the late 2000s. First, using a quantitative content analysis of the Parliamentary debates from 2006 to 2011, it reveals how the Conservatives exploited the issue in order to create divisions amongst opposing opposition MPs and amongst targeted segments of partisan voters of other national parties. Secondly, using georeferenced pool data from Vote Compass, it finds empirical evidence that the Conservatives’ efforts won them new support in the 2011 federal elections, especially amongst cross-pressured voters and within the ridings that were targeted during the debates. In doing so, the article provides a rare empirical example of wedge politics carried in a multiparty system.

Partisanship and the Effectiveness of Personal Vote Seeking

Recent work suggests that partisan dealignment should undermine political parties by giving members of Parliament (MPs) greater incentives for personal vote seeking. The key mechanism underlying such arguments is that voters with stronger party ties are less responsive to the records of individual MPs. However, existing tests of this mechanism are largely either indirect, based on responses to rebellious voting or nonlegislative behavior, or drawn from the United States. This article thus provides a new test of whether partisan voters are less responsive to MPs' parliamentary activity. I present two complementary analyses—a natural experiment in New Zealand and a survey experiment in the United Kingdom. Both suggest that more active MPs are more popular, but that this relationship is moderated by voters' partisanship. MPs' parliamentary activity chiefly influences the behavior of voters with the weakest partisanship. This offers new evidence that partisan dealignment heightens legislators’ incentives for personal vote seeking.

Information aggregation with runoff voting

A majority of truth-seeking voters wants to choose the alternative that better matches the state of the world, but voters may disagree on which alternative is the best match due to private information. When we have an arbitrary number of alternatives and sophisticated partisan voters exist in the electorate, electing the correct alternative is challenging. We show that multi-round runoff voting achieves asymptotically full-information equivalence. That is, when the society is large, it can lead to the election of the correct alternative under fairly general assumptions regarding the information structure and partisans' preferences.

Parties are always right: the effects of party cues and policy information on attitudes towards EU issues

This article analyses the influence that political parties exert upon citizens’ opinions about European Union issues. By measuring at the same time the content and source effects on political attitudes, the article considers the possibility that voters pay less attention to the arguments used in a political message than to its source. Results from an online survey experiment in Spain show that partisan voters use a heuristic model of processing when taking positions on an unfamiliar EU issue, even though the prevalence of the source effect is moderated by the respondent’s political sophistication and party attachment. The results also indicate that some respondents tend to pay less attention to a message’s content when the message comes from their preferred party. Such findings raise concerns about the possibility for EU issue voting to guarantee the accountability of political elites and party–voter linkages.

The Moderating Effect of Debates on Political Attitudes

AbstractIn theory, candidate debates can influence voters by providing information about candidates' quality and policy positions. However, there is limited evidence about whether and why debates influence voters in new democracies. We use a field experiment on parliamentary debates during Ghana's 2016 elections to show that debates improve voters' evaluations of candidates. Debates have the strongest effect on partisan voters, who becomemorefavorable toward and more likely to vote for opponent‐party candidates and less likely to vote for co‐partisans. Experimental and unique observational data capturing participants' second‐by‐second reactions to the debates show that policy information was the most important causal mechanism driving partisan moderation, especially among strong partisans. A follow‐up survey shows that these effects persist in electorally competitive communities, whereas they dissipate in party strongholds. Policy‐centered debates have the potential to reduce partisan polarization in new democracies, but the local political context conditions the persistence of these effects.