Strong Partisans Research Articles

What makes voters willing to tolerate undemocratic behaviours? Survey experiment from South Korea

ABSTRACT What makes voters willing to tolerate leaders’ undemocratic behaviours? As institutional mechanisms have proven vulnerable to partisan interests, the ballot box has emerged as the ultimate safeguard of democracy when voters will reject undemocratic politicians. In seeking to answer this question, we focus on how partisanship and views of democracy affect voter willingness to punish politicians for undemocratic behaviours. We conduct a conjoint experiment in South Korea where concerns about democratic backsliding have recently increased. We find that Korean voters tend to electorally punish politicians for undemocratic behaviours. However, strong partisanship and affective polarization weaken the likelihood of electoral punishment, and voters are more willing to forgive undemocratic behaviour by co-partisan candidates. Our results also indicate that leaders experience varying degrees of punishment for different types of undemocratic behaviours contingent upon voter perspectives on democracy.

The Partisan Vote: Shared Partisanship and Constituent Service in the U.S. Congress

The theory of the “personal vote” assumes that constituent service, or the process by which members of Congress help their constituents navigate the federal bureaucracy, is a component of representation that transcends partisanship. However, recent research suggests that affective polarization and negative partisanship may discourage constituents from reaching out to ask for help from cross-partisan legislators. Using a conjoint experiment, I show that shared partisanship has a strong effect on constituents’ decisions about which of their legislators to contact for assistance. However, positive in-party affect is unrelated to these preferences, suggesting that negative partisanship is responsible for this result. Gender and seniority also matter for constituents’ preferences even when accounting for shared partisanship. The results suggest that legislators’ ability to build a “personal vote” by performing constituent service may be weakened in an era of strong partisanship.

Where Are the Sore Losers? Competitive Authoritarianism, Incumbent Defeat, and Electoral Trust in Zambia's 2021 Election.

How do electoral turnovers shape citizen perceptions of election quality in competitive authoritarian regimes? We argue that electoral outcomes are crucial for determining perceptions of electoral quality. While detailed evaluation of electoral trust is complex in competitive autocracies with institutional uncertainty and polarized electoral environments, turnovers send strong and unequivocal signals about election quality. Previous literature has noted a strong partisan divide in electoral trust in competitive authoritarian regimes, but turnovers can boost trust among both incumbent and opposition supporters. We test this argument in the case of Zambia's 2021 election, a case where a ruling party lost despite electoral manipulation and strong control over the Election Management Body (EMB). Empirically, we leverage the first-ever panel survey carried out during Zambian elections. Comparing trust in elections before and after the election, we find that perceived election quality increased after the 2021 electoral turnover among both losers and winners. We find that trust in elections increased the most among winning opposition supporters. Moreover, despite the outgoing president's attempt to portray the election as fraudulent, losing ruling-party supporters also increased their trust in elections after the turnover. The study has important implications for the literature on democratic consolidation and institutional trust.

Neutral news from in- and out-party media and attitudes toward them: integration of expectancy violations theory and hostile media perceptions

ABSTRACT The contemporary U.S. media environment is characterized by a strong partisan divide. Both Democrats and Republicans express strong distrust in oppositional media and accuse them of showing partisan bias. Clearly, this public opinion climate is not helpful to a healthy democracy. Unlike the common wisdom, these news outlets do provide neutral political coverage. Based on propositions from expectancy violation theory and hostile media perceptions, we test the effects of exposure to neutral news from an out-party outlet on violation interpretation and attitudes toward oppositional media. An online experiment (N = 610) shows that exposure to neutral news from an out-party outlet leads to violation unexpectedness and valence for Democrats and violation valence for Republicans. We also find an indirect positive effect of exposure to neutral news on attitudes toward an out-party outlet through violation valence for Democrats and Republicans. Unlike what can be expected of hostile media perceptions, these effects are more noticeable for stronger partisans. Our study also reveals different patterns of partisan reactions to neutral news from in-party outlets. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Investigating the Relationships Among HMP, Credibility, and TPP of News Media and Their Links to News Media Policy Support

Abstract Prior research has suggested that perceptions of bias, credibility, and influence of news media may relate to one another but there have been relatively few efforts to integrate these concepts under a coherent theoretical framework. Based on social identity theory, we examined whether political identity relates to hostile media perception (HMP), credibility, and third-person perception (TPP) and if such perceptions in tandem predict attitudes toward news media policies—restriction of news media and media literacy education, which may neutralize the influences of seemingly hostile and untrustworthy news media. Findings from two national online surveys showed that strong partisans tend to perceive stronger HMP and less credibility in news media. Additionally, progressives had greater HMP. HMP and TPP were positively associated with media restriction policy support and media literacy education support. Credibility showed negative associations with restrictive media policy support, whereas the opposite pattern was found in the relationship with media education support. Furthermore, the positive associations between HMP and media policy support were mediated by TPP. The negative associations between credibility and restrictive media policy support were also mediated by TPP.

Feeling Misinformed? The Role of Perceived Difficulty in Evaluating Information Online in News Avoidance and News Fatigue

ABSTRACT As misinformation has become a prominent topic in U.S. politics, Americans have become increasingly concerned about the problem that misinformation poses. Correspondingly, people have become weary of news media, with some actively avoiding news media and political information. While many situational and contextual factors contribute to news avoidance, this study considers how the feeling of being misinformed online might to contribute to related news attitudes and behaviors, like active news avoidance and news fatigue. Using panel data from a three-wave survey of U.S. adults collected during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, we find that feeling misinformed online is a widely felt phenomenon in the U.S. that is associated with increased active news avoidance and news fatigue overtime. We also find that strong partisans in the U.S. asymmetrically shift their news media use when they feel misinformed online; with strong Democrats relying more on non-partisan news media and strong Republicans using less news media overall, including less conservative news media.

What Explains Interest Group Prominence in Parliamentary Speech? Policy Agenda, Partisanship, or Conflict Expansion

Gaining the attention of legislators in a crowded advocacy landscape is a key dilemma for organized interests. Yet, there has not been a great deal of direct analysis of whether groups are indeed recognized as important by politicians in the context of them advancing political arguments. In this article, we examine under what conditions interest groups achieve prominence among political elites. Drawing on a supervised machine learning approach to code prominence from legislative speech, we exploit variations in levels of prominence for the entire Australian interest groups system. We find that prominence is highly concentrated and that it covaries with the need to align with prevailing policy agendas and the logic of conflict expansion. Conversely, we do not find evidence of a strong partisan or ideological dimension of prominence. This contributes to our understanding of the responsiveness and representativeness of democratic political systems in which the interest group sector is expected to funnel public preferences into policymaking.

Politicization of fake news debates and citizen attitudes towards fake news and its regulation

As fake news becomes a pressing social concern, governments from many countries have considered legislation against fake news. This study examined how citizens formed opinions about fake news and an anti-fake news bill in South Korea where political elites provide polarized discourse regarding fake news and associated regulatory politics. Progressive leaders more intensely criticized fake news and proposed an anti-fake news bill whereas conservative leaders vehemently opposed the bill. The analysis of survey data showed that elite polarization may affect citizens’ perceptions of fake news and attitudes toward anti-fake news legislation. Strong partisans tended to believe that fake news is more hostile toward their in-group and had stronger third-person perceptions, and such perceptions were positively related to the support of anti-fake news legislation. Moreover, progressive voters tended to have stronger hostile and third-person perceptions than conservative counterparts, reflecting endorsement of their in-group leaders’ positions. News reception about the bill further increased the gap in the level of support for the bill between progressive and conservative citizens.

Testing the Robustness of the ANES Feeling Thermometer Indicators of Affective Polarization

Affective polarization (AP)—the tendency of political partisans to view their opponents as a stigmatized “out group”—is now a major field of research. Relevant evidence in the United States derives primarily from a single source, the American National Election Studies (ANES) feeling thermometer time series. We investigate whether the design of the ANES produces overestimates of AP. We consider four mechanisms: overrepresentation of strong partisans, selection bias conditional on strong identification, priming effects of partisan content, and survey mode variation. Our analysis uses the first-ever collaboration between ANES and the General Social Survey and a novel experiment that manipulates the amount of political content in surveys. Our tests show that variation in survey mode has caused an artificial increase in the mixed-mode ANES time series, but the general increase in out-party animus is nonetheless real and not merely an artifact of selection bias or priming effects.

Gendered Ambivalence: The Structure of Attitudes About Female Candidates

ABSTRACT I argue that the gender-role incongruity between being a woman and the masculine stereotypes of political leadership roles will lead to more ambivalence about women relative to men and that gendered traits will comprise the content of these ambivalent attitudes. I analyze attitudinal ambivalence toward female candidates using ANES data. The results find that ambivalence is higher among voters who hold cross-pressured identities as strong partisans with sexist beliefs for both Democratic and Republican women. In 2016, individuals held stronger ambivalent attitudes about Hillary Clinton even among strong Democrats but there was very little ambivalence in attitudes about Trump.

Independents, not partisans, are more likely to hold and express electoral preferences based in negativity

The contemporary political domain is characterized by widespread negativity. Much of this negativity is thought to be generated by strong partisans, who overall express more anger, animosity, and bias than weaker partisans. The present research proposes, however, that self-categorized political independents hold preferences based more in negativity than partisans do, making them more likely to frame their preference in oppositional terms, act on the basis of opposition (vs. support), and agree with opposition- (vs. support-) based messages. Five studies (N = 51,687) present evidence of this valenced pattern of independent-partisan differences. In Study 1, across five decades, U.S. independents' (vs. partisans') preferences were more reflective of negative (vs. positive) partisanship. In Study 2, across four presidential elections, a greater proportion of independents than partisans reported voting “against” (vs. “for”) a candidate. In Study 3, negative (vs. positive) attitudes better predicted independents' participatory behaviors relative to those of partisans. In Study 4, independents agreed more with negatively-framed (vs. positively-framed) political appeals, whereas the opposite was true of partisans. Independents' (vs. partisans') preferences were more negative before the current politically polarized era and their proportional increase reflects a broader shift toward negative preferences. Finally, Study 5 replicated Studies 1–2 in three non-political domains, including one where attitudes were positive overall. Implications are discussed for the relationship between partisanship and negativity, how independents differ psychologically from partisans, partisanship as a moderator of preference valence-framing effects, and the possibility of general dispositional tendencies to base, frame, and express one's political and non-political preferences negatively.

Cross-cutting interaction, inter-party hostility, and partisan identity: Analysis of offensive speech in social media

This study utilizes social media data and deep-learning-based text classification methods to investigate cross-cutting interactions on social media. Our findings reveal that people are more likely to use offensive speech in response to content published by opposing partisans. Furthermore, we demonstrate how inter-party hostility is associated with the partisan identity of both the message sender and the target in the interaction. On one hand, the findings indicate that strong partisans and people who publicly assert their partisan identities tend to attack opposing partisans, suggesting a relationship between the salience of partisan identity and value defense mechanisms. On the other hand, strong partisans, especially politicians, are more likely to be the target of offensive speech from opposing partisans. The disparity in the extent of received offensive speech is argued to result from individuals’ tendency to maintain their partisan identification by expressing hostility toward representative individuals of opposing partisans.

Policy Threat, Partisanship, and the Case of the Affordable Care Act

How do political conditions influence whether public support develops for a new policy? Specifically, does the presence of partisan polarization and a viable threat to a policy’s continuation prevent the emergence of such support? We propose a theoretical framework that considers how policy feedback may be affected by the presence or absence of both policy threat and polarization. We argue that a threat is likely to increase policy salience and trigger loss aversion, expanding policy feedback even amid strong partisanship. We examine the threat to the Affordable Care Act after Republicans won control of Congress and the White House and stood poised to act on their long promise to repeal the law. Five waves of panel data permit analysis of how individuals’ responses to the law changed over time, affecting their support for it as well as their voting calculations. The results suggest that policy threat heightens the effect of policy feedback for some populations while depressing it for others, in some cases mitigating partisan polarization, and overall boosting program support.

Divided We Stand? On the Political Engagement of U.S. Economists

This article contributes to the debate on the role of normative values and political preferences among (publicly visible) economists in the United States. For this purpose, we conduct a social network analysis on the signatories of economist petitions, which we identify as one channel for economists to exert public influence. Our contribution is twofold: On the one hand, we provide an extended empirical basis for the debate on consensus in economics and the role of political preferences and normative values in economics. On the other hand, this article offers a viable tool to trace the normative charging of (prospective) economist petitions and economists based on the social structure of petition networks. The main empirical finding of our article is that there is a very strong partisan divide among petition-signing economists in the United States, which mirrors the cleavage within the U.S. political system. We also find that the bipartite partisan structure of the economist petition network increases with the political involvement of economists. This divide is particularly stark in the field of fiscal policy. A greater tendency towards consensus, in turn, can be found with respect to monetary policy, carbon pricing, immigration, free trade or market-based decision tools in general.

More than Mere Access: An Experiment on Moneyed Interests, Information Provision, and Legislative Action in Congress

Campaign donors and corporate interests have greater access to Congress, and the legislative agenda and policy outcomes reflect their preferences. How this privileged access converts into influence remains unclear because petitioner-legislator interactions are unobserved. In this article, we report the results of an original survey experiment of 436 congressional staffers. The vignette manipulates a petitioner’s identity, the substance of the request, and the supporting evidence being offered. We test how likely staff are to take a meeting, to use the information being offered, and to recommend taking a position consistent with the request, as well as whether they perceive the request to be congruent with constituent preferences. Donors and lobbyists are no more likely to be granted access than constituents, but staffers are more likely to use information and to make legislative action recommendations when the information source is an ideologically aligned think tank. Subgroup analysis suggests these effects are particularly strong among ideological extremists and strong partisans. And, information offered by aligned think tanks are thought to be representative of constituent opinion. Our results reveal the partisan and ideological predispositions that motivate legislative action that is more costly than merely granting access.

Macropartisanship with Independents

Abstract MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson’s classic article “Macropartisanship” extended the study of political behavior from static analyses of American elections to the dynamics of partisanship between elections. This launched new frontiers of research, such as studying the effects of presidential approval and economic indices on aggregate party identification. However, the Macropartisanship literature made an important oversight: changes in partisanship between elections are usually from one partisan group to identification as an independent, or vice versa. A single measure of aggregate partisanship, like the original Macropartisanship measure, leaves out independents altogether. This has important theoretical and empirical consequences that are evident in an era of increasingly strong partisanship. We conceive of Macropartisanship as a compositional variable and study how its components are affected by changes in economic sentiment and presidential approval.

Measuring Misperceptions

Abstract Prior research has reported that Americans hold biased perceptions about the composition of US parties. Survey respondents vastly overestimate the frequency with which partisans belong to other social groups stereotypically associated with their party. We argue that when perceptions of Democrats, Republicans, and members of the American public are directly compared, evidence of relative misperceptions is limited. Drawing on novel survey experimental measures, we find that respondents underestimate many differences in the demographic composition of the Democratic and Republican parties. A few stereotypes thought to be associated with one party or the other may apply to partisans in general. Similar trends appear across parties and among strong partisans. These findings suggest limits on the extent to which inaccurate estimates of who affiliates with each party can be interpreted as evidence of party-specific stereotypes.

Characterizing partisan political narrative frameworks about COVID-19 on Twitter

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis that has been testing every society and exposing the critical role of local politics in crisis response. In the United States, there has been a strong partisan divide between the Democratic and Republican party’s narratives about the pandemic which resulted in polarization of individual behaviors and divergent policy adoption across regions. As shown in this case, as well as in most major social issues, strongly polarized narrative frameworks facilitate such narratives. To understand polarization and other social chasms, it is critical to dissect these diverging narratives. Here, taking the Democratic and Republican political social media posts about the pandemic as a case study, we demonstrate that a combination of computational methods can provide useful insights into the different contexts, framing, and characters and relationships that construct their narrative frameworks which individual posts source from. Leveraging a dataset of tweets from the politicians in the U.S., including the ex-president, members of Congress, and state governors, we found that the Democrats’ narrative tends to be more concerned with the pandemic as well as financial and social support, while the Republicans discuss more about other political entities such as China. We then perform an automatic framing analysis to characterize the ways in which they frame their narratives, where we found that the Democrats emphasize the government’s role in responding to the pandemic, and the Republicans emphasize the roles of individuals and support for small businesses. Finally, we present a semantic role analysis that uncovers the important characters and relationships in their narratives as well as how they facilitate a membership categorization process. Our findings concretely expose the gaps in the “elusive consensus” between the two parties. Our methodologies may be applied to computationally study narratives in various domains.

The Effects of Politician’s Moral Violations on Voters' Moral Emotions

Existing empirical research on voters’ responses to individual politicians’ moral transgressions pays limited attention to moral emotions, although moral emotions are an integral part of voters’ moral judgment. This study looks at U.S. voters’ discrete moral emotional responses to politician’s moral violations and examines how these discrete moral emotional responses are dependent on voters’ own moral principles and the extent to which they identify with a political party. We report on a 5 × 3 between-subjects experiment where 2026 U.S. respondents reacted to politicians’ violations of one of five moral foundations defined by Moral Foundations Theory. We randomly vary which moral foundation is violated and the partisanship of the politician. While voters’ own moral principles somewhat condition moral emotional responses, we find that voters’ moral emotional responses mostly depend on partisan identification. When voters share party identity with a politician committing a moral violation, they respond with less anger, contempt, disgust and shame than when they do not share party identity. The effect is greater among strong partisans. However, we find limited evidence that specific moral emotions are activated by violations of particular moral foundations, thereby challenging Moral Foundations Theory.

Lowered Expectations and Shifting Standards? – Two Survey Experiments exploring Neo‐populist Political Scandals and the Perceived Trustworthiness of Politicians

The recent wave of electoral success for right‐wing populists has coincided with an increase in political scandals as well as a new, neo‐populist type, of scandals. Thus, it has been argued that the public might have become increasingly numb to scandals and that scandalous behaviour by populist politicians is often neglected as part of their ‘typical’ behavior. In this article, we explore how involvement in neo‐populist scandals affects the public's trust in individual politicians and whether this effect is moderated by the politician's party affiliation – both populist and non‐populist – and party preferences of citizens judging a scandal. We also compare the effects with two other types of traditional scandals, involving financial misconduct or an extra‐marital affair. Two factorial vignette survey experiments (N = 1,000 and 1,577) were carried out in 2017 and 2019 to explore whether and how neo‐populist scandals affect trust in politicians under varying circumstances. The key findings are that neo‐populist scandals clearly have negative effects on trust for a scandalous politician but the judgement of scandals are subject to strong partisanship effects. Thus, supporters of a populist party do not see a scandalous behaviour by a populist politician as harmful for their trust in that politician. This effect is not evident among supporters of a traditional party when ‘their’ politician is involved in a scandal. Populist supporters also tend not to see scandals in general as especially harmful to their trust in politicians, regardless of type of scandal nor affiliation of a scandalous politician.