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Negative Partisanship: Why Americans Dislike Parties But Behave Like Rabid Partisans: Negative Partisanship and Rabid Partisans
Abstract
One of the most important developments in American politics over the last 40 years has been the rise of negative partisanship—the phenomenon whereby Americans largely align against one party instead of affiliating with the other. Though it has the power to reshape patterns of political behavior, little is known about the microfoundations driving negative partisanship. In this article, we show how the growing racial divide between the two major parties, as well as the presence of partisan-friendly media outlets, have led to the rise of negative partisanship. We also utilize the growing literature on personality and politics to show how the Big Five personality traits are predictive of negative partisanship. The results suggest that the psychological roots of negative partisanship are both widespread and, absent drastic individual and structural-level changes, likely to persist.
... The role of media bias, both in and of itself as well as how it relates to coverage of the president, has long been studied by researchers (Abramowitz, Webster, 2018;Chappell, Suzuki, 1993;Chiang, Knight, 2011;D'Alessio, 2012;Entman, 2007;Jacobson, 2015;Wlezien, 2024). Before moving forward, it is important to note that my study will not be examining bias more generally, rather any trend of negative sentiment that the press may or may not have towards the office of the president. ...
... By contrast, my alternative hypothesis (B) suggests that the press will generally produce more negative sentiments toward the president than is reflected in public opinion polling on average, regardless of whether the voters agree with such an assessment or not. The reason for this is, simply put, that negative sentiments and conflict have always been greater attention-grabbers than more positive sentiments and agreement (Abramowitz, Webster;2018). ...
... By contrast, my alternative hypothesis (B) suggests that the press will generally produce more negative sentiments toward the president than is reflected in public opinion polling on average, regardless of whether the voters agree with such an assessment or not. The reason for this is, simply put, that negative sentiments and conflict have always been greater attention-grabbers than more positive sentiments and agreement (Abramowitz, Webster;2018). ...
... This concept of affective polarisation is rooted in Social Identity Theory 5 , which posits that humans are naturally inclined to categorise themselves and others into in-groups and out-groups, with greater salience of these identities encouraging greater positive affect towards the in-group and greater animosity towards the out-group. However, rather than observing any great increase in in-group warmth, instead researchers have noted declining warmth towards political foes, or a growth in so called negative partisanship 6 . ...
... Creators of such content have varied objectives, including monetisation of the sharing of sensationalist or partisan news, but often there is an incentive to influence and reduce trust in democratic processes by increasing group polarisation [12][13][14][15] . Indeed, exposure to partisan reporting that is critical of those out-groups has been found to decrease ratings of trust and liking of those groups, feeding into negative partisanship 6,16 . ...
The generation and distribution of hyper-partisan content on social media has gained millions of exposure across platforms, often allowing malevolent actors to influence and disrupt democracies. The spread of this content is facilitated by real users’ engaging with it on platforms. The current study tests the efficacy of an ‘inoculation’ intervention via six online survey-based experiments in the UK and US. Experiments 1–3 (total N = 3276) found that the inoculation significantly reduced self-reported engagement with polarising stimuli. However, Experiments 4–6 (total N = 1878) found no effects on participants’ self-produced written text discussing the topic. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of the literature on polarisation and previous interventions to reduce engagement with disinformation.
... This concept of affective polarisation is rooted in Social Identity Theory 5 , which posits that humans are naturally inclined to categorise themselves and others into in-groups and out-groups, with greater salience of these identities encouraging greater positive affect towards the in-group and greater animosity towards the out-group. However, rather than observing any great increase in in-group warmth, instead researchers have noted declining warmth towards political foes, or a growth in so called negative partisanship 6 . ...
... Creators of such content have varied objectives, including monetisation of the sharing of sensationalist or partisan news, but often there is an incentive to influence and reduce trust in democratic processes by increasing group polarisation [12][13][14][15] . Indeed, exposure to partisan reporting that is critical of those out-groups has been found to decrease ratings of trust and liking of those groups, feeding into negative partisanship 6,16 . ...
The generation and distribution of hyper-partisan content on social media has gained millions of exposure across platforms, often allowing malevolent actors to influence and disrupt democracies. The spread of this content is facilitated by real users’ engaging with it on platforms. The current study tests the efficacy of an ‘inoculation’ intervention via six online survey-based experiments in the UK and US. Experiments 1–3 (total N = 3276) found that the inoculation significantly reduced self-reported engagement with polarising stimuli. However, Experiments 4–6 (total N = 1878) found no effects on participants’ self-produced written text discussing the topic. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of the literature on polarisation and previous interventions to reduce engagement with disinformation.
... 3. Negative partisanship is defined as voting based on hostility toward the opposing party and its leaders affectively, creating affective polarization between opposing parties' supporters (Abramowitz and Webster 2018). 4. ...
Do party elites strategically nominate (non)veiled women? While research exists on Muslim-minority countries, little is known about the dynamics of such strategies in Muslim-majority contexts, where the interplay of Islam, secularism, gender, and veiling is complex. To address this gap, I examine electoral competition in Turkey, investigating whether parties strategically nominate (non)veiled women for mayoral seats in opposing party strongholds to capitalize on the political symbols associated with women’s identities — a strategy I term “symbolic leverage.” Using an original dataset, elite interviews, and electoral discourse analysis, I find that parties leverage the symbolic value of veiled and nonveiled women candidates to appeal to rival party voters. Moreover, interviews with Islamist party elites show that nominating nonveiled women serves multiple objectives for them: signaling tolerance for secular lifestyles, assuaging concerns about Islamization, attracting swing voters, and projecting a democratic image. These findings illuminate how parties utilize women’s inclusion in polarized contexts.
... In many ways, alternative news and its partisan bent marks the widening divide in contemporary western society. The past decade has seen increased polarization on most topics, including issues of science and COVID-19 [77,78], and increased animosity between political factions [31,32]. One major development has been a right-wing backlash against intellectual, government, and corporate institutions that are viewed as culturally at odds with traditional values and the economic interests of common people [79]. ...
Trust in mainstream institutions is declining while people are increasingly turning to alternative media and conspiracy theories. Previous research has suggested that these trends may be linked, but the dynamics of trust across multiple sources has received little investigation. Is trust a neutral process, where each source is judged independently, is it a zero-sum competition, where a loss for one side is a gain for the other, or does losing trust in one source in foster a more generalized sense of distrust? Across three experimental studies (N = 2,951) we examined how people react when a source makes a serious error, testing four potential models of trust dynamics. We found that regardless of whether the outlet is mainstream, counter-mainstream, or neutral, trust drops for the erring source but does not rise for its competitors. This was the case in the context of both food regulations and COVID-19 precautions. Such a pattern suggest that each source may be judged independently of others. However, in several cases, an error made by one source led to a loss of trust in all sources, suggesting that rather than choosing sides between competing sources, people are also judging the media landscape as a whole to discern if it is feasible to find trustworthy information. However, correlational data did also find that the more people saw a source as politicized, the less they trusted that source and the more they trusted its competitors.
... Moreover, it would be highly interesting to test whether the psychological make-up of voters is a factor to consider. It has been shown, for instance, that high agreeableness and extraversion, and low levels of negative emotionality, are strong predictors of negative partisanship and (the strength of) negative affect towards the out-party (e.g., A. I. Abramowitz & Webster, 2018;Webster, 2018) and therefore might impact negativity in leader effects as well. ...
p>It is well known that voters’ evaluation of candidates on leadership traits influences their overall candidate assessment and vote choice (i.e., leader effects). It remains unclear, however, whether positive or negative leader trait evaluations are most influential. We argue that especially in current-day political reality—in which ideological and affective polarization are skyrocketing and the political climate is fueled with negativity, high levels of incivility, and negative campaigning—the negative leader effects outweigh the positive ones. Moreover, we expect this negativity bias in leader effects to be conditioned by partisanship and political dissatisfaction. To test these expectations, we triangulate multiple studies. First, we use data from a multi-country election survey to examine the relation between perceived leadership traits of real candidates and party preferences, providing observational evidence from the US, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. Second, focusing on the causal mechanism, we test the negativity bias in a survey experiment among American voters. Here, we manipulate how leadership traits (competence, leadership, integrity, empathy) of a fictitious candidate are presented in terms of valence (positive, negative), and test the impact of these cues on voters’ candidate evaluations and vote choices. The findings indicate, as predicted, that negative leader effects influence voters most strongly. Thus, the role of party leaders is mainly a push instead of a pull factor in elections. Additionally, we show that partisanship and political dissatisfaction seem relevant only for candidate evaluations, not for vote choice. This article pushes the field of candidate evaluations forward by examining the dynamics of the negativity bias in leader effects in an era of negative politics.</p
... The contributions of Abramowitz and Saunders (2008) and Abramowitz and Webster (2018) to political science have been notable, particularly in their research on partisanship and polarization in contemporary politics. Abramowitz introduced and popularized the concept of negative partisanship, which has emerged as a pivotal framework for comprehending the political polarization in America. ...
... Many scholars have noted that White conservatives will likely view January 6 th positively or deny its validity as a major event. White liberals are more likely to view it as a major negative political event, with many noting the racism expressed by the participants (Abramowitz and Webster, 2018;Udani et al., 2018;Svolik, 2020;van Noort, 2022;Kalmoe and Mason, 2022;Painter and Fernandes 2022;Krishnarajan, 2023). It is believed that at least part of the explanation may be motivated reasoning and extreme affective polarization, in which many voters loathe the other political party to the point of being willing to justify non-democratic modes of governance to achieve policy goals. ...
The January 6 th insurrection at the U.S. capital was an eye-opening moment for many Americans. With the 2024 election cycle in swing, members of the Democratic Party are using January 6 th as a rallying call for the need to protect democracy. But were the events of January 6 th viewed equally among liberals? We argue that the events of January 6 th resonate for a particular demographic well-informed liberal White voters. We argue that liberal minority voters will feel the racial undertones of January 6 th more than White liberals. Furthermore, we examine how voters of different races viewed the events of January 6 th and how views on race relations impact their perceptions of January 6 th . We find that White liberals are less angry about race relations in the aftermath of January 6 th , and while they viewed January 6 th as an insurrection and blamed Trump and Republicans in Congress for their role, they are less likely to say that racism and White Supremacy motivated the insurrectionists. This paper indicates that race plays a key role in political perceptions, even among those who hold similar political ideologies.
... As shown in Panel A, Democratic-conditioned bots were recommended Anti-Republican videos (light blue) more frequently than Pro-Democratic videos (dark blue). Similarly, Panel B shows that Republicanconditioned bots were recommended more Anti-Democratic videos (orange) than Pro Republican ones (red), indicating a general negative partisanship bias [58]. However, this bias was greater for Republican bots than Democratic ones (Republican bots: χ 2 = 507.3, ...
TikTok is a major force among social media platforms with over a billion monthly active users worldwide and 170 million in the United States. The platform's status as a key news source, particularly among younger demographics, raises concerns about its potential influence on politics in the U.S. and globally. Despite these concerns, there is scant research investigating TikTok's recommendation algorithm for political biases. We fill this gap by conducting 323 independent algorithmic audit experiments testing partisan content recommendations in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential elections. Specifically, we create hundreds of "sock puppet" TikTok accounts in Texas, New York, and Georgia, seeding them with varying partisan content and collecting algorithmic content recommendations for each of them. Collectively, these accounts viewed ~394,000 videos from April 30th to November 11th, 2024, which we label for political and partisan content. Our analysis reveals significant asymmetries in content distribution: Republican-seeded accounts received ~11.8% more party-aligned recommendations compared to their Democratic-seeded counterparts, and Democratic-seeded accounts were exposed to ~7.5% more opposite-party recommendations on average. These asymmetries exist across all three states and persist when accounting for video- and channel-level engagement metrics such as likes, views, shares, comments, and followers, and are driven primarily by negative partisanship content. Our findings provide insights into the inner workings of TikTok's recommendation algorithm during a critical election period, raising fundamental questions about platform neutrality.
... Rooted in affective evaluations of the out-party as disdainful, negative partisanship stems from the growing alignment between citizens' social, cultural, ideological, and partisan identities (Abramowitz & Webster, 2016, 2018Iyengar & Krupenkin, 2018;Mason, 2015;Mason & Wronski, 2018). Many citizens are embedded within highly partisan media environments (Abramowitz & Webster, 2018;Iyengar & Krupenkin, 2018), are exposed to increasingly negative campaign messaging (Iyengar et al., 2012), and are increasingly aware of the ideological extremity of the opposing party and its candidates (Lelkes, 2021a). In a crossnational comparison, Boxell et al. (2020) identify racial diversity, partisan sorting, ethnic fractionalization, and elite polarization as the most important predictors of affective partisanship. ...
Do voters who dislike the other side prefer candidates who can win, even if they are less representative? Negative partisanship is an important feature of American politics, but few scholars have examined its relationship to voter decision-making. We argue that negative partisanship shapes how voters prioritize candidate electability and substantive representation. Using two conjoint experiments, we find that a primary candidate’s likelihood of beating the opposing party in the general election has a strong influence on whether they are chosen as a voter’s strategic choice (who they would vote for) and sincere choice (who best represents their interests). Importantly, the effect of electability is conditional on voters’ feelings toward the opposing party, but not their own party. Negative partisans are also more willing to trade greater ideological and policy representation for a better shot at electoral victory.
... Political scientists have been tracking the growing rift between political parties as well as the increasingly negative voter attitudes towards fellow Americans for the past several decades [1]. Additionally, several cultural critics have noted the shift in American attitudes towards accepting liberal ideas [2]. ...
... Others trace it to fear and insecurity in the post-cold war age of terror and in the face of economic displacement wrought by the globalization of capital and labor markets (Getmansky and Zeitzoff 2014;Woods and Arthur 2017). Still others worry that generalized anger is weakening commitments to democratic norms and deepening political polarization (Abramowitz and Webster 2018;Magni 2017;Vasilopoulos et al. 2019;Webster 2020;Allamong and Peterson 2021). Each of these accounts sees emotion as a pivotal force driving the polarization of political attitudes and voting behavior (also see Iyengar et al. 2019). ...
Despite growing interest in political emotion, progress toward understanding the role of emotion in international relations is hampered by two related problems: (1) we have a more fully developed lexicon for discussing emotions related to people than to countries, and (2) we have a better understanding of the main dimensions of interpersonal emotion than of the emotional terrain of foreign policy. Theory development thus depends on an improved account of the emotions commonly evoked in international relations and of how they relate to one another. Techniques developed by psychologists and applied to text from United Nations Special Session proceedings and speeches by prominent national leaders can facilitate a network analysis of emotions in international discourse, yielding a general picture of the emotions at play in foreign policy across time and topic. This research provides a foundation to improve our understanding of the way emotion is structured in international relations.
... Pero no alcanzan a explicar cuatro rasgos que están presentes en todos los tratamientos contemporáneos del problema (y no solamente los referidos a la polarización en los Estados Unidos). Esos rasgos son: a) su aparición relativamente reciente; b) su estrecha asociación con la competencia electoral entre partidos políticos; c) el predominio de las aversiones sobre las afinidades, del rechazo a lo ajeno sobre el acercamiento a lo propio; lo que en estudios políticos llaman partidismo negativo (Abramowitz y Webster, 2018), y d) la mayor intensidad en las expresiones de hostilidad de los partidarios de fuerzas de derecha o polarización asimétrica (Leonard et al., 2021;Pierson y Schickler, 2020). ...
Este volumen colectivo se propone como un espacio de reflexión interdisciplinar, interregional e intergeneracional sobre el significado de la llamada crisis democrática, las narrativas que sustentan esa inestabilidad y la transformación de la democracia, así como de intercambio de experiencias que nos permitan pensar en resiliencia y resistencia. Su principal objetivo es dilucidar desde diferentes miradas disciplinares el significado de la noción de crisis con respecto a las democracias contemporáneas, para interrogar sus diversas causalidades y su manifestación discursiva en lo político, lo social y lo cultural. El libro está organizado en tres partes orientadas, respectivamente, a ofrecer un diagnóstico del estado actual de las democracias de la región, analizar los marcos interpretativos que empleamos en la caracterización de las crisis en América Latina y, finalmente, presentar experiencias y prácticas políticas que buscan responder a dichos desequilibrios. Sus diversas contribuciones parten de la necesidad de reconocer que la comprensión y respuesta a las crisis democráticas actuales no se limita a su dimensión institucional, sino que va a la par de una crisis de conocimiento, es decir, de un agotamiento de las epistemologías de las cuáles partimos para su análisis.
... Negative advertising strongly influences affective polarization (Iyengar et al., 2012). Further, "negative partisanship" has been the key driving dynamic in partisan sorting (Abramowitz & Webster, 2018). The dislike and distrust that characterize affective polarization have become powerful forces in US politics (Iyengar et al., 2019). ...
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.
... These deep contestations both exacerbate and are reinforced by the political polarization along party lines in some sort of vicious circle (Mueller, Garner, Benson, Pally, Ali, this volume). Let us clarify what we mean here: Political polarization has two dimensions, one ideological, the other one affective (see e.g., Saunders 2008, Abramowitz andWebster 2018; Garner, this volume). Ideological polarization refers to political attitudes getting more extreme, either along the "left vs. right" dimension or the "liberal cosmopolitan vs. authoritarian nationalist" dimension (see below on these cleavages). ...
This book explores the deep contestations of the liberal script in the contemporary United States from a variety of perspectives. The US is today confronted with a crisis of democracy because of a profound ideological and affective polarization. The book argues that Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is a symptom as well as a catalyst rather than the cause of the contemporary contestations of the liberal script in the US. To discern their major drivers from a longue durée perspective, each chapter takes a step back, asking: How can we best describe the current contestations of the liberal script in the US, exploring the extent to which the US is unique in comparison to other liberal democracies facing similar contestations? What are the main drivers and root causes that explain the current contestations and the crisis of American democracy they may precipitate? What have been and what are the likely consequences for the future of American democracy? The various authors discuss—among other topics—the US public sphere, populism, polarization, the Supreme Court, Christian evangelicalism, African-American contestations, as well as the consequences of the deep contestations for US foreign policy.
... The idea is that people shall even vote out of fear and guided by hate. Hence elections tend to be transformed into acclamations and plebiscites, and campaigning has become more and more "negative" (see the debates on "affective polarization", "negative partisanship", etc.; Iyengar et al. 2018;Abramowitz and Webster 2018). ...
The large-scale use of semantic transfer and inversion as rhetorical tactics is particularly prevalent in right-wing discourses and populist »alternative knowledge« production. The contributors to this volume analyze processes of re-semanticizing received meanings, effectually re-coding those meanings. They investigate to what extent rhetorical maneuvers serve to establish new and powerful belief systems beyond rational and democratic control. In addition to the contemporary rightwing and conspiracy narratives, the contributions examine the discursive fields around conceptions of human nature and the deep past, population politics, gender conceptions, use of land, identity politics, nationhood, and cultural heritage.
... That is the problem of the public" (1927, LW 2:365). We should teach students to value friction and to be suspicious of both majority tyrannies and negative partisanship (Abramowitz and Webster 2018), and we should help them become compassionate, active, and informed problem solvers. Instead of teaching them to oppose others' fundamentalism with more of the same, we need a more genuinely radical approach that is not Pollyannaish. ...
This article asks five questions about moral fundamentalism: (1) What is it? (2) Is it really such a bad thing? (3) Isn’t it good for motivating social action? (4) Do many theorists inadvertently legitimize it? and (5) Can we educate beyond it?
Affective polarization has emerged as an important construct in the literature on partisanship. However, most efforts to measure it have relied on simple preexisting indices, potentially missing the complexity of affective polarization. In this article, we address these concerns by reconceptualizing and deriving a new measure of affective polarization. Drawing on the notion of political sectarianism and other lines of research in political behavior and social psychology, we develop and validate a novel multidimensional measure of affective polarization consisting of three parts: othering, aversion, and moralization. Our analyses yield a valid and reliable nine-item measure with three subdimensions. These subdimensions and the full scale broadly correlate with various measures of political identity, anti-democratic elite action, and political violence. Importantly, we find that the subdimensions have different patterns of correlation with key criterion variables, suggesting that othering, aversion, and moralization are distinct components of affective polarization.
Violent partisan hostility is a growing concern for American democracy, yet the role of partisan elites in driving support for political violence remains underexplored. This is especially problematic given their significant influence over public opinion. How does partisan elites’ rhetoric threatening violence affect support for violence against opposing partisans? Focusing on social media, where violent messages by partisan elites from both sides can reach a wide audience with potentially devastating effects, I explore how such messages influence support for violence against opposing partisans. Drawing insights from theories of partisan opinion leadership and inter-group conflict, I conduct a two-by-two (violent rhetoric vs. non-violent rhetoric; co-party elites vs. opposing party elites), pre-registered survey experiment on a sample reflecting the national population. I demonstrate that co-party (but not opposing party) elites’ violent rhetoric increases support for political violence and that partisans fail to counteract elites’ violent rhetoric. Furthermore, I show that fear mediates the impact of violent rhetoric, highlighting its role in fostering support for political violence through fearmongering. This paper is among the first to examine the effects of partisan elites’ violent rhetoric on support for political violence, advancing our knowledge in partisanship, emotion and politics, and political communication.
A defining feature of what Alexander calls Civil Society (CS) III is its separation-analytic and empirical-from the putatively non-civil spheres of the family, schools, and associational forms which lack public communicative intent and comprise CS I. While critical to the progress of CST as a research program, with this separation and delimited conception, civil sphere theorists may miss a key insight of CS I regarding the mutual interdependence of spheres. Although civil codes, institutions, and interactional practices may have their ?natural? home in the civil sphere, their emotional and normative force, and their survival over time, depend upon their ancillary institutionalization in non-civil spheres. Families are key to democratic socialization. Schools cultivate democratic dispositions through citizen-formation, inducting students into their nation?s democratic traditions. And through civic action and civic interaction orders prejudices are challenged, and citizens become open to new forms of incorporation. Using the case of contemporary American democratic culture, we survey scholarship on political polarization and social capital?s decline in the US, and argue that the discord characteristic of contemporary America?s civil sphere arises, in part, from these non-civil spheres. That is, the erosion of democratic solidarity and basic norms of civility originate in democratic deficits in those non-civil spheres that scaffold the civil sphere.
A pesar de que en lo postulado por la Escuela de Míchigan el concepto de identificación partidista incluía una dimensión positiva y otra negativa, lo cierto es que la segunda prácticamente no ha recibido atención. La presente investigación pretende evaluar hasta qué punto el partidismo negativo representa en la actualidad un factor explicativo del comportamiento electoral en España. En concreto, se estudia cómo en el contexto de las elecciones generales españolas de julio del año 2023 el partidismo negativo hacia la derecha radical incrementó la probabilidad de votar al PSOE y si, a su vez, el rechazo generado por el PSOE también promovió el apoyo a Vox. Para la comprobación de estas hipótesis se usan datos de la III Encuesta Nacional de Polarización Política en España, elaborada por el Centro de Estudios Murciano de Opinión ública (CEMOP) en plena campaña electoral. Los resultados de los modelos de regresión logística binaria implementados evidencian que el partidismo negativo hacia la derecha radical representa un (novedoso) factor explicativo del voto por el PSOE, pero que Vox no se alimentó ignificativamente del rechazo hacia los socialistas —ni tampoco hacia Sumar—. Asimismo, se constata la excepcional capacidad de la derecha radical para despertar procesos de identificación negativa, sobre todo entre las mujeres.
Practice- and Policy-Oriented Abstract
People frequently post their views on hot-button issues, such as immigration, on social media platforms on which the content is often publicly accessible to broad audiences. One of these audiences is hiring managers as more than 50% of organizations report viewing job applicants’ accounts as part of social media screening during the hiring process. Our research shows that applicants’ social media activity on hot-button issues can significantly impact their hireability. In a study of 377 professionals with hiring experience, we find that viewing applicants’ social media posts about immigration influenced judgments of similarity, likability, and two dimensions of hireability: expected task performance and expected organizational citizenship behaviors. Surprisingly, the hot-button posts outweighed job-relevant information regardless of where (Facebook or Twitter) the content was viewed; this indicates hiring managers generalized their impressions across social media platforms. A post hoc qualitative applicability check with 79 hiring managers confirmed these findings. Our study highlights the risks of using hedonic social media for screening job applicants, emphasizing the need for organizations to be mindful of how personal disclosures online can unintentionally influence hiring decisions.
Politics is a man’s job” is a powerful and enduring stereotype. Does exposure to women politicians change beliefs about women’s competency for politics? While others have investigated the impact of women role models on women’s and girls’ engagement and ambition, previous research has not directly examined women politicians’ effect on political gender stereotypes in the United States. Using a panel survey of both adolescents and adults, we ask whether adolescents who observe women politicians become more likely to favor more women in office and more likely to see women as possessing positive leadership traits. We find that those for whom women candidates are more novel—Republican teens, and especially Republican girls—are most likely to shift their beliefs when exposed to women candidates of either party. Consistent with research on political socialization, these effects are apparent only for adolescents, not adults.
Many scholars question the extent to which presidents are legally constrained, but others argue that public opinion provides an indirect but important mechanism through which law checks unilateral power. Through thirteen survey experiments, we examine whether the legal foundations of executive action—whether framed as pursuant to delegated statutory authority or contra the will of Congress—affect public support for unilateralism. Legal frames can influence public support, particularly among those with the strongest attachments to the rule of law. However, these effects are highly concentrated in hypothetical vignettes or temporally distant cases. Legal frames have little effect on support for executive action by recent presidents, even when they shape public perceptions of an action’s legality. Our results inform debates about the conditions under which public opinion might serve as a backstop against democratic backsliding by checking presidential overreach, and the role of law in shaping public debates about presidential power.
This article asks five questions about moral fundamentalism: (1) What is it? (2) Is it really such a bad thing? (3) Isn’t it good for motivating social action? (4) Do many theorists inadvertently legitimize it? and (5) Can we educate beyond it?
Research shows that female politicians often receive more negative news coverage than their male counterparts, which can undermine voter support and contribute to their underrepresentation in politics. Despite the increase in politically active women and heightened attention to gender issues in political discourse in the United States, the past decade has also witnessed a rise in divisive rhetoric and political polarization. These changes not only transformed the political environment but also may have impacted media coverage of political figures. Despite the evolving sociopolitical landscape, existing research on news sentiment lacks a longitudinal perspective. This study uses transformer-based classifiers for sentiment detection and state space models for time series analysis to provide new longitudinal evidence on the evolution of positive and negative coverage of 1,095 US politicians in almost 900,000 news articles during the 2010s. The results indicate that while some female politicians experienced more negative coverage than men, the pattern varied depending on the politicians’ party affiliation and media visibility. In both election and routine periods, the media portrayed female Democrats, who received moderate levels of media coverage, less negatively than male Republicans, but more critically than female Republicans and male Democrats. Notably, Democratic and Republican women received slightly more positive coverage in most election years of the 2010s. Highly visible politicians, especially women, received more negative attention overall. The study and its findings advance our understanding of how news sentiment varies across different groups of politicians and how it fluctuates between election and nonelection periods.
This article explores the attitudes of Poles living abroad who decided not to participate in the national referendum, even though they voted in simultaneously held parliamentary elections. Their abstention is viewed as a manifestation of their (anti) party identification. The ruling right-wing populist party had hoped that raising fears about immigrants, the retirement age, and the sale of Polish assets would boost support for the referendum and—consequently—parliamentary elections. However, this strategy backfired by mobilizing the party’s opponents, who boycotted the referendum in protest. Through quantitative analysis, we explore how the 2023 referendum deepened societal divisions fueled by polarization. We investigate the connection between voters’ decisions and their party affiliations. Using data from a sample of 1087 individuals, our analysis shows significant correlations between party identification and referendum abstention. The findings suggest that strong party allegiance can drive strategic nonparticipation, often as a form of protest or civil disobedience against opposing political forces.
Today, few political news outlets receive universally favorable evaluations from the American public. In retaining broad public approval, local media remain a notable exception that is important to understand. We consider the durability of local news trust to criticism from politicians, focusing on Republican elites because they generally are more willing to attack the media than Democrats. In a survey experiment, we find that exposure to a Republican politician’s attack on a local newspaper dramatically reduces the public’s trust in and intent to use local news. This attack is particularly effective among Republicans, although it also leads Democrats and Independents to negatively shift their views of the local newspaper. Among those exposed to elite criticism of local news, overall trust and partisan divides between Republicans and Democrats resemble those for national media. This shows that the credibility of local news depends on the absence of elite criticism rather than resilience to it.
This study analyzes the voting behavior of the interviewees who voted for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the May 14 and 28, 2023 presidential elections on the basis of data obtained through in-depth interviews. Findings from in-depth interviews reveal that negative partisanship and affective polarization are evident in opposition voters' preference for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The findings show that voters do not have a strong emotional bond with Kılıçdaroğlu, but voted for him out of a desire to change the current government. The study sheds light on the emotional and identity aspects of political leadership and voter behavior during the presidential election process. Keywords: Negative partisanship, affective polarization, voter behavior, in-depth interview.
The political polarization of Sindh, where the Sindhi ethnicity dominates
rural areas while urban areas are dominated by the “Muhajir”,
leads to the political monopoly of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party in
rural areas and the Muttahida Quami Movement in urban areas.
Both parties have adopted similar strategies to achieve their goals
after establishing their dominance in their respective areas. The
current study analysed nine hypotheses, supporting five while
rejecting the others. Adopting a quantitative approach, the study
finds that partisanship increases voting behaviour by virtue of
reducing voting deferral at the day of polling. In addition, young
voters in Pakistan largely remain unattached to the traditional
leaders or parties, mainly because this group has not personally
experienced the tragedies that have historically shaped the partisanship
among the old generation. Due to this detachment, they
successfully maintain a neutral political stance, which makes them
free to support any leader or party that meets their expectations.
Donald Trump’s tenure as the 45th President of the United States from 2017 to 2021 was marked by a series of controversial policies and rhetoric that significantly impacted both the nation’s international relations and domestic political landscape. This paper provides an in-depth exploration of the multifaceted effects of Trump’s presidency on global affairs and internal political dynamics from 2016 to 2024. Through a comprehensive analysis of his foreign policy actions, economic decisions, and rhetorical strategies, the study aims to elucidate the broader implications of his leadership on the world stage and within the United States. Incorporating a rigorous review of significant policy shifts, international agreements, economic reforms, and public opinion data, the research seeks to assess the lasting influence of Trump’s tumultuous presidency on the country’s global standing and internal cohesion.
Constitutional hardball is when partisan actors engage in legal tactics that violate democratic norms for political advantage. The Republican Party seems to have engaged in hardball more than the Democratic Party in recent years, which is surprising as both parties should be similarly incentivized to use hardball. This asymmetry in elite behavior could reflect differences in what each parties’ coalitions tolerate. For example, non-white voters might oppose hardball tactics more than white voters for reasons such as hardball historically being used to enforce racial hierarchies. If true, that could constrain on Democratic elites’ actions more Republican elites due to Democrats’ more racially diverse base. I draw on a long line of research on partisanship and group interest to argue instead that both white and non-white voters of both parties should be similarly disposed towards hardball. This article then marshals data from the American National Election Survey (ANES) and original surveys to test that argument. In support of my hypotheses, I find white and non-white members of both parties have similar levels of support and similar motivations for hardball. Political elites are likely free to engage in undemocratic acts such as hardball with little fear of backlash from their supporters.
Presidents occupy a unique role as both the head of the executive branch and a de facto party leader. They nationalize politics and polarize lawmaking. Members of Congress know this, and they leverage the president's symbolic power to heighten political conflict. I argue that lawmakers, particularly those in the nonpresidential party, invoke the president to nationalize legislative debate and polarize constituent opinion. Using the text of House and Senate floor speeches between 1973 and 2016 and a within‐member panel design, I find that legislators reference the president more frequently in the out‐party and increasingly so as a district's media environment becomes more nationalized. Presidential references are also moderated by constituency partisanship. I support the behavioral implications with a vignette experiment: when a Republican Senator invokes President Biden in a policy speech, Republican respondents increase approval of that Senator and oppose political compromise. This research highlights the institutional consequences of nationalization and negative partisanship.
This quantitative discourse analysis (QDA) explores the differences and similarities of the Biden and Trump doctrines, focusing on how each presidential doctrine is driven by specific geopolitical issues. We analyze the themes deployed in political speeches by Presidents Biden and Trump, based on a codebook of cultural/political themes that have been developed for use on a broad range of political leaders. The same themes were mentioned most often by both presidents, military, climate, allies, borders, and immigration. However, they prioritized these key issues differently and often expressed different policy positions on and attitudes toward them. In some cases, the presidents shared key views and differed less than commonly portrayed in media. Currently, the world is experiencing new levels of geopolitical turmoil. Strategic competition between the United States versus China and Russia drives international policy, and Russia has initiated a major war against Ukraine. Therefore, this study will also examine the two presidents’ views on China, Russia, and the Ukraine.
We start by reviewing the brief literature on negative voting, highlighting the main theoretical perspectives on the phenomenon. While negative voting has been originally conceptualized in rational choice terms, under the framework of retrospective/economic voting, or in connection to long-lasting political identities, we propose to specify and test an additional dimension stemming from the most recent literature on affective polarization.
This chapter tackles the relationship between negative voting and its proposed affective component. Our findings show that negative affect is present among positive and negative voters alike. Contrary to the most immediate expectation that negative voting would be the product of disproportionate negativity among negative voters, however, the results contained in this chapter show that the distinctive feature of negative voters is their low level of in-group affect vis-a-vis positive voters.
This study examines the attribution of responsibility for government failures during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Japan—specifically, responsibility for the collapse of the healthcare system. The intent is to reveal which political actors Japanese voters hold accountable and how partisanship is associated with perceptions of responsibility. While there have been previous studies on retrospective voting in Japan, little empirical work has been done to shed light on the attribution of responsibility. Based on the results of an online survey conducted in four prefectures in August 2021, this study yields two main findings. First, Japanese voters tend to blame national politicians rather than local officials or government employees for the failures of the healthcare system, and are particularly likely to attribute responsibility to the prime minister as well as to politicians from the ruling and opposition parties. Second, both positive and negative partisanship are associated with attribution of responsibility, and negative partisanship is more strongly correlated with attribution of responsibility than positive partisanship. Thus, negative partisanship plays an important role in shaping voters’ perceptions of government failures in Japan.
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.
Despite the prevalence of generational labels like Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z in popular discourse, most studies of generationalism have been restricted to content analyses of generational rhetoric. This study investigates the prevalence of negative generationalism, or negative affective sentiment towards perceived generational out‐groups within the US public and considers how it may be linked with partisan political identities. Using a nationally representative survey of 1232 Americans, this research examines the association between generational self‐identity and partisan identity using feeling thermometer scores for four generational groups (Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Z) and the two major political parties (Democrats and Republicans). I also report the findings of an experimental manipulation testing the extent to which generational priming exacerbates affective partisan polarization. The results reveal strong evidence of positive affect towards one's generational in‐group, but a less consistent pattern of negative generationalism. Neither the correlational nor the experimental outcomes support a strong and consistent link between generationalism and partisanship, though Republicans feel significantly warmer towards Baby Boomers and colder towards Gen Z than independents. Despite the largely null findings concerning partisanship, this study reveals that these generational labels do appear to bear some degree of social meaning as social identities for people, pointing to new directions for future sociological research on generationalism.
Much scholarly attention has focused on partisan affective polarization, a growing animosity between Democrats and Republicans in the mass public. Less notice has been given to affective polarization among the ideological teams, liberals, and conservatives. Yet, we suggest that given ideology’s particular influence in U.S. politics, ideological affective polarization has important and distinct consequences. We begin by offering evidence that ideological affective polarization both exists and has increased sharply in recent years. We theorize that this shift alters the way individuals come to form attachments to ideological identities, as well as the structure and tenor of ideology in the United States.
Partisanship in the United States in the contemporary era is largely characterized by feelings of anger and negativity. While the behavioral consequences of this new style of partisanship have been explored at some length, less is known about how the anger that is at the root of this growing partisan antipathy affects Americans’ views of the national government. In this paper, I utilize data from the 2012 American National Election Studies to show that higher levels of anger are associated with a greater level of distrust in government across a variety of metrics. I then present evidence from a survey experiment on a national sample of registered voters to show that anger has a causal effect in reducing citizens’ trust in government. Importantly, I find that anger is able to affect an individual’s views of the national government even when it is aroused through apolitical means. I also find that merely prompting individuals to think about politics is sufficient to arouse angry emotions. In total, the results suggest that anger and politics are closely intertwined, and that anger plays a broad and powerful role in shaping how Americans view their governing institutions.
Over the last half-century, the South has undergone a radical transformation. One aspect of this transformation, the growth of the Republican Party, has produced a viable and competitive twoparty system in the region. Contrary to other studies examining this phenomenon, this study offers an explicitly political explanation—the theory of relative advantage—for the growth of Southern Republicanism. Using a pooled time series methodology to simultaneously examine the implications of this theory, as well as the effect of economic and demographic factors traditionally associated with GOP growth, it is shown that the observed pattern mirrors the expectations of relative advantage theory. In contrast to the existing literature, little support was found for economic or demographic explanations of Republican growth.
MULTIPLE-FACTOR PATTERNS BASED ON RATINGS OF PERSONALITY TRAITS ARE NOT, IN THEMSELVES, SUFFICIENT GROUNDS ON WHICH TO INFER ANYTHING ABOUT THE PERSONALITY STRUCTURE OF THE RATEES. AN ARGUMENT AND THE RESULT OF A MONTE CARLO STUDY CONFIRMED THAT A CLEARLY ARTICULATED, MULTIPLE-FACTOR STRUCTURE CAN BE OBTAINED SOLELY AS A RESULT OF THE SHARED "IMPLICIT PERSONALITY THEORY" OF THE RATERS. HOWEVER, 2 KINDS OF CRITERIA, 1 BASED ON A MEASURE OF INTERRATER AGREEMENT AND THE OTHER ON CONVERGENT AND DISCRIMINANT VALIDITY AGAINST OTHER MEASURES OF THE TRAITS, PROVIDE BASES FOR JUDGING THE DEGREE OF RATEE RELEVANCE IN ANY SET OF PERSONALITY RATINGS. THE USE OF THESE CRITERIA IS ILLUSTRATED FOR THE MONTE CARLO DATA AND FOR 4 SAMPLES OF EMPIRICAL DATA. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE DESIGN, ANALYSIS, AND REPORTING OF FUTURE PERSONALITY RATING STUDIES ARE DISCUSSED. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Previous research on personality traits and political attitudes has largely focused on the direct relationships between traits and ideological self-placement. There are theoretical reasons, however, to suspect that the relationships between personality traits and political attitudes (1) vary across issue domains and (2) depend on contextual factors that affect the meaning of political stimuli. In this study, we provide an explicit theoretical framework for formulating hypotheses about these differential effects. We then leverage the power of an unusually large national survey of registered voters to examine how the relationships between Big Five personality traits and political attitudes differ across issue domains and social contexts (as defined by racial groups). We confirm some important previous findings regarding personality and political ideology, find clear evidence that Big Five traits affect economic and social attitudes differently, show that the effect of Big Five traits is often as large as that of education or income in predicting ideology, and demonstrate that the relationships between Big Five traits and ideology vary substantially between white and black respondents.
The five-factor model has recently received wide attention as a comprehensive model of personality traits. The claim that these five factors represent basic dimensions of personality is based on four lines of reasoning and evidence: (a) longitudinal and cross-observer studies demonstrate that all five factors are enduring dispositions that are manifest in patterns of behavior; (b) traits related to each of the factors are found in a variety of personality systems and in the natural language of trait description; (c) the factors are found in different age, sex, race, and language groups, although they may be somewhat differently expressed in different cultures; and (d) evidence of heritability suggests that all have some biological basis. To clarify some remaining confusions about the five-factor model, the relation between Openness and psychometric intelligence is described, and problems in factor rotation are discussed.
Does media bias affect voting? We analyze the entry of Fox News in cable markets and its impact on voting. Between October
1996 and November 2000, the conservative Fox News Channel was introduced in the cable programming of 20 percent of U. S. towns.
Fox News availability in 2000 appears to be largely idiosyncratic, conditional on a set of controls. Using a data set of voting
data for 9,256 towns, we investigate if Republicans gained vote share in towns where Fox News entered the cable market by
the year 2000. We find a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between
1996 and 2000. Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns that broadcast Fox News. Fox News also affected
voter turnout and the Republican vote share in the Senate. Our estimates imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 28 percent of
its viewers to vote Republican, depending on the audience measure. The Fox News effect could be a temporary learning effect
for rational voters, or a permanent effect for nonrational voters subject to persuasion.
One of the most important developments within the American electorate in recent years has been the rise of affective polarization. Whether this is due to notions of group-based conflict or ideological disagreement, Americans increasingly dislike the opposing political party and its supporters. I contribute to this growing literature on affective polarization by showing how differences in individuals’ Big Five personality traits are predictive of both whether an individual dislikes the opposing party and the degree to which they express this hostility. Modeling negative affect toward the opposing party as a two-stage process, I find that Extraverted individuals are less likely to have negative affective evaluations of the opposing party. Additionally, conditional on disliking the opposing party, my results indicate that higher levels of Agreeableness lowers the degree to which individuals dislike the out-party. Moreover, these relationships are substantively stronger than common sociodemographic predictors such as age, race, and educational attainment.
We measure the persuasive effects of slanted news and tastes for like-minded news, exploiting cable channel positions as exogenous shifters of cable news viewership. Channel positions do not correlate with demographics that predict viewership and voting, nor with local satellite viewership. We estimate that Fox News increases Republican vote shares by 0.3 points among viewers induced into watching 2.5 additional minutes per week by variation in position. We then estimate a model of voters who select into watching slanted news, and whose ideologies evolve as a result. We use the model to assess the growth over time of Fox News influence, to quantitatively assess media-driven polarization, and to simulate alternative ideological slanting of news channels.
We show that contemporary differences in political attitudes across counties in the American South in part trace their origins to slavery's prevalence more than 150 years ago. Whites who currently live in Southern counties that had high shares of slaves in 1860 are more likely to identify as a Republican, oppose affirmative action, and express racial resentment and colder feelings toward blacks. We show that these results cannot be explained by existing theories, including the theory of contemporary racial threat. To explain the results, we offer evidence for a new theory involving the historical persistence of political attitudes. Following the Civil War, Southern whites faced political and economic incentives to reinforce existing racist norms and institutions to maintain control over the newly freed African American population. This amplified local differences in racially conservative political attitudes, which in turn have been passed down locally across generations. © 2016 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.
The media environment is changing. Today in the United States, the average viewer can choose from hundreds of channels, including several twenty-four hour news channels. News is on cell phones, on iPods, and online; it has become a ubiquitous and unavoidable reality in modern society. The purpose of this book is to examine systematically, how these differences in access and form of media affect political behaviour. Using experiments and new survey data, it shows how changes in the media environment reverberate through the political system, affecting news exposure, political learning, turnout, and voting behavior.
The use of wedge issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and immigration has become standard political strategy in contemporary presidential campaigns. Why do candidates use such divisive appeals? Who in the electorate is persuaded by these controversial issues? And what are the consequences for American democracy? In this provocative and engaging analysis of presidential campaigns, Sunshine Hillygus and Todd Shields identify the types of citizens responsive to campaign information, the reasons they are responsive, and the tactics candidates use to sway these pivotal voters. The Persuadable Voter shows how emerging information technologies have changed the way candidates communicate, who they target, and what issues they talk about. As Hillygus and Shields explore the complex relationships between candidates, voters, and technology, they reveal potentially troubling results for political equality and democratic governance. The Persuadable Voter examines recent and historical campaigns using a wealth of data from national surveys, experimental research, campaign advertising, archival work, and interviews with campaign practitioners. With its rigorous multimethod approach and broad theoretical perspective, the book offers a timely and thorough understanding of voter decision making, candidate strategy, and the dynamics of presidential campaigns.
One of the most important developments affecting electoral competition in the United States has been the increasingly partisan behavior of the American electorate. Yet more voters than ever claim to be independents. We argue that the explanation for these seemingly contradictory trends is the rise of negative partisanship. Using data from the American National Election Studies, we show that as partisan identities have become more closely aligned with social, cultural and ideological divisions in American society, party supporters including leaning independents have developed increasingly negative feelings about the opposing party and its candidates. This has led to dramatic increases in party loyalty and straight-ticket voting, a steep decline in the advantage of incumbency and growing consistency between the results of presidential elections and the results of House, Senate and even state legislative elections. The rise of negative partisanship has had profound consequences for electoral competition, democratic representation and governance.
Personality and the Foundations of Political Behavior is the first study in more than thirty years to investigate the broad significance of personality traits for mass political behavior. Drawing on the Big Five personality trait framework, Jeffery J. Mondak argues that attention to personality provides a valuable means to integrate biological and environmental influences via rich, nuanced theories and empirical tests of the antecedents of political behavior. Development of such holistic accounts is critical, Mondak contends, if inquiry is to move beyond simple “blank slate” environmental depictions of political engagement. Analyses examining multiple facets of political information, political attitudes, and participation reveal that the Big Five trait dimensions – openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability – produce both direct and indirect effects on a wide range of political phenomena.
In recent decades, Democratic and Republican party elites have grown increasingly polarized on all three of the major domestic policy agendas: social welfare, racial, and cultural issues. We contend that the mass response has been characterized not by the traditional expectation of "conflict displacement" or the more recent account of "ideological realignment," but by what we term "conflict extension." Mass attitudes toward the three agendas have remained distinct, but the parties in the electorate have grown more polarized on all three. Conflict extension, rather than conflict displacement or ideological realignment, has occurred because there has been a limited mass response to the growth of elite-level party polarization. Only party identifiers who are aware of party elite polarization on each of the issue dimensions have brought their social welfare, racial, and cultural issue attitudes toward the consistently liberal or consistently conservative stands of Democratic and Republican elites. Analyses using data from the 1972 through 2000 National Election Studies support both the aggregate- and individual-level predictions of the conflict extension perspective.
Disagreements over whether polarization exists in the mass public have confounded two separate types of polarization. When social polarization is separated from issue position polarization, both sides of the polarization debate can be simultaneously correct. Social polarization, characterized by increased levels of partisan bias, activism, and anger, is increasing, driven by partisan identity and political identity alignment, and does not require the same magnitude of issue position polarization. The partisan-ideological sorting that has occurred in recent decades has caused the nation as a whole to hold more aligned political identities, which has strengthened partisan identity and the activism, bias, and anger that result from strong identities, even though issue positions have not undergone the same degree of polarization. The result is a nation that agrees on many things but is bitterly divided nonetheless. An examination of ANES data finds strong support for these hypotheses.
Divided America: The Ferocious Power Struggles in American Politics. By Earl and Merle Black. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. 286p. $26.00.
Earl and Merle Black have delivered another insightful book that describes contemporary politics by examining historical trends. They argue that the proper understanding of American politics—from election to policy—requires a regional analysis. In their own words: “Important geographical divisions, we believe, are at the heart of the very close national battles between Democrats and Republicans. American politics becomes much more interesting—and easier to understand—when the party battles are examined region by region” (p.xi). Their five regions are the South, Northeast, Pacific Coast, Midwest, and Mountains/Plains.
There is the textbook 'how-a-bill-becomes-a-law' diagram, and then there is the way that most major measures really wind their way through the contemporary Congress. Sinclair aptly calls this 'unorthodox lawmaking', and gives students a much more realistic take on today's legislative process. Bills can follow a number of routes through Congress: they might be considered by several committees, or none; they could be subjected to non-germane amendments or filibustered on the Senate floor; or they may be governed by special rules individually tailored to facilitate or slow a bill's progress. Whatever the unorthodox route, Sinclair describes the legislative process as it really operates, exploring the range of special procedures, practices, and the factors that have contributed to their emergence. In this timely revision, she focuses especially on how partisan polarization has shaped the legislative process in recent years, with new case studies on the Bush tax cuts, the 2005 energy bill, and the 2003 Medicare/prescription drug bill. Always written with the narrative in mind and providing a unique perspective, "Unorthodox Lawmaking" introduces novice students to the intricacies of Congress. Sinclair also tackles the larger questions: Does the use of new procedures and practices enhance or inhibit the likelihood of a bill becoming law? What other effects does unorthodox lawmaking have on how Congress functions? This important supplemental reading gives students the tools to assess the relative successes and limitations of the legislative process.
Using data from the 1976–1994 American National Election Studies and the 1992–94 ANES panel survey, this paper demonstrates that the outcomes of the 1994 and 1996 elections reflected a longterm shift in the bases of support and relative strength of the two major parties. This shift in the party loyalties of the electorate was based on the increased ideological polarization of the Democratic and Republican Parties during the Reagan and post-Reagan eras. Clearer differences between the parties' ideological positions made it easier for citizens to choose a party identification based on their policy preferences. The result has been a secular realignment of party loyalties along ideological lines.
We examine the associations between personality traits and the strength and direction of partisan identification using a large national sample. We theorize that the relationships between Big Five personality traits and which party a person affiliates with should mirror those between the Big Five and ideology, which we find to be the case. This suggests that the associations between the Big Five and the direction of partisan identification are largely mediated by ideology. Our more novel finding is that personality traits substantially affect whether individuals affiliate with any party as well as the strength of those affiliations, effects that we theorize stem from affective and cognitive benefits of affiliation. In particular, we find that three personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness) predict strength of partisan identification (p<.05). This result holds even after controlling for ideology and a variety of issue positions. These findings contribute to our understanding of the psychological antecedents of partisan identification.
Using data from two recent surveys, we analyze the relationship between personality traits, as measured by the Five-factor Model, and political participation, political ideology, partisanship, and vote choice. We confirm previous findings, including the strong positive association between the personality trait of Openness and liberalism and between Conscientiousness and conservatism, and also report several new results. We merged administrative records containing actual turnout and party registration status with our survey data. Using this novel approach, we confirm that the strong relationship between personality and politics holds when actual behavior is substituted for survey reports. We also measure the association of personality and several forms of political participation, including voting, contributing, and volunteering. The effect of personality on participation is often comparable to, or larger in magnitude than, the effect of factors that are central in earlier models of turnout, such as religious attendance, age, education, and income.
Political discussion matters for a wide array of political phenomena such as attitude formation, electoral choice, other forms
of participation, levels of political expertise, and tolerance. Thus far, research on the underpinnings of political discussion
has focused on political, social, and contextual forces. We expand upon this existing research by examining how individual
personality traits influence patterns of political discussion. Drawing on data from two surveys we investigate how personality
traits influence the context in which citizens discuss politics, the nature of the relationship between individuals and their
discussion partners, and the influence discussion partners have on respondents’ views. We find a number of personality effects
and our results highlight the importance of accounting for individual predispositions in the study of political discussion.
KeywordsPersonality–Big Five–Political discussion–Social influence
The transformation of Southern politics over the past fifty years has been one of the most significant developments in American political life. The emergence of formidable Republican strength in the previously solid Democratic South has generated a novel and highly competitive national battle for control of Congress. Tracing the slow and difficult rise of Republicans in the South over five decades, Earl and Merle Black tell the remarkable story of political upheaval.
The Rise of Southern Republicans provides a compelling account of growing competitiveness in Southern party politics and elections. Through extraordinary research and analysis, the authors track Southern voters' shifting economic, cultural, and religious loyalties, black/white conflicts and interests during and after federal civil rights intervention, and the struggles and adaptations of congressional candidates and officials.
A newly competitive South, the authors argue, means a newly competitive and revitalized America. The story of how the South became a two-party region is ultimately the story of two-party politics in America at the end of the twentieth century. Earl and Merle Black have written a bible for anyone who wants to understand regional and national congressional politics over the past half-century. Because the South is now at the epicenter of Republican and Democratic strategies to control Congress, The Rise of Southern Republicans is essential to understanding the dynamics of current American politics.
Table of Contents:
1. The Southern Transformation
2. Confronting the Democratic Juggernaut
3. The Promising Peripheral South
4. The Impenetrable Deep South
5. The Democratic Smother
6. The Democratic Domination
7. Reagan's Realignment of White Southerners
8. A New Party System in the South
9. The Peripheral South Breakthrough
10. The Deep South Challenge
11. The Republican Surge
12. Competitive South, Competitive America
Notes
Index
Reviews of this book:
These two leading scholars of Southern politics present a rigorous investigation of how voting in the peripheral South (Florida, Arkansas, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee) and the Deep South (Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina) was realigned since Ronald Reagan was first elected president in 1980.
--Karl Helicher, Library Journal
With publication of their latest book, The Rise of Southern Republicans the Blacks, both 60, have produced a trilogy that traces an almost geologic-style evolution in the South's political landscape. They've analyzed the whys and what-fors of a region, that in the past 50 years, has gone from impenetrably Democratic to competitively Republican. Their overarching conclusion: the two-party warfare that defines the South defines the nation...The Blacks' work--a mix of political wonkery and historical perspective, cut with the deliciously illuminating anecdote--is read by academics in various disciplines and political junkies of all stripes. The books are valued for their coolly dissecting insights...Because their writing swells beyond the data-crunching lab work of most political scientists--though new readers beware: The books are littered with scary-looking charts and graphs--it travels beyond academia. Party strategists are steeped in the work. "The Blacks wrote the book on how academic political science can illuminate practical politics," says Republican pollster Whit Ayers.
--Drew Jubera, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The South's political identity has been transformed in the last half-century from a region of Democratic hegemony to a region of Republican majority. Earl and Merle Black...sedulously examine this remarkable change...This is a work of serious scholarship that lacks any hint of a partisan purpose. Committed readers will increase their understanding of both Southern and national politics. The Blacks' effort may well be the definitive statement on Southern politics over the 20th century.
--Publishers Weekly
Not since 1872, Earl Black and Merle Black point out in their third book on Southern politics, had the Republicans constructed majorities from both the North and the South in both houses, and it was the national character of their victory that made the 1994 election such a landmark...In The Rise of Southern Republicans , the Black brothers chronicle the party's history from the 1930s to the present, election by election. They illuminate the economic, racial and political dynamics that gradually moved the South toward the Republican Party, while also warning that the Republicans do not by any means own the region in the way the Democrats once did.
--Kevin Sack, New York Times Book Review
In The Rise of Southern Republicans brothers Earl and Merle Black explain the partisan realignment that has brought the South into the national political mainstream. The Blacks...focus most of their attention on the congressional arena, where voting patterns reflect long-term partisan loyalty more closely than at the presidential level...[T]he story the authors of The Rise of Southern Republicans tell is a fascinating one, with implications for American politics that are both profound and uncertain.
--David Lowe, Weekly Standard
The rise of southern Republicans is one of the most consequential stories in modern American politics. For political reporters of a certain generation...the Democratic dominance of Southern congressional politics is barely understood. The Black brothers make it all very clear.
--Major Garrett, Washington Monthly
This superb analysis of Southern politics by Earl Black...and his brother Merle Black...not only tracks the recent rise of Republicans in the South but explains why party realignment along ideological lines was so long in coming to that region... The Rise of Southern Republicans is already being rightly hailed as a political science classic. Its strength is the thorough and systematic manner in which it examines the changing ways a wide variety of factors have affected Southern voting patterns over the past four decades. The data and the rigor of the analysis are truly impressive.
--James D. Fairbanks, Houston Chronicle
This extraordinary book by the country's two leading scholarly experts on the politics of the American South could accurately have been titled "Everything you wanted to know about Southern politics, as well as everything you could ever imagine asking about it"...Their knowledge of the intricacies of particular congressional districts across the region is amazing, and their analysis of the larger partisan trends in the region makes this the most important book on Southern politics.
--Stephen J. Farnsworth, Richmond Times-Dispatch
The Black brothers have done it again. The Rise of Southern Republicans is without question the most important book ever written on the role of the South in Congress and the partisan consequences for our national legislature. Far and away the most comprehensive updating of the V.O. Key classic Southern Politics . This is a major work by extremely talented scholars.
--Charles S. Bullock, University of Georgia
The dramatic rise of the Republican Party in the South is the single most important factor in the transformation of American politics since the 1960s. Earl and Merle Black have described this process in a book that is witty, always filled with insight, and readable to the last page. The Rise of Southern Republicans is indispensable reading for anyone interested in American politics - past, present or future.
--Dan T. Carter, author of The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics
This marvelous book captures - with authority and readability - the big story of post-New Deal party politics in the United States. It is a surefire classic of political science and politics.
--Richard F. Fenno, Jr., author of Congress at the Grassroots: Representational Change in the South, 1970-1998
- Hillygus
Raters, ratees, and randomness in personality structure
- Norman
- Shafer
- Hetherington
Why Washington won't work: Polarization, political trust, and the governing crisis
- M J Hetherington
- T J Rudolph
Hetherington, M. J., & Rudolph, T. J. (2015). Why Washington won't work: Polarization, political trust, and the
governing crisis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Personality and political behavior. Available at SSRN 1412829.
- A. S. Gerber
- G. A. Huber
- C. Raso
- S. E. Ha
The five-factor model of personality: Theoretical perspectives
- G Saucier
- L R Goldberg
Saucier, G., & Goldberg, L. R. (1996). The language of personality: Lexical perspectives. In J. S. Wiggins (Ed.), The
five-factor model of personality: Theoretical perspectives (pp. 21-50). New York, NY: Guilford Press.