Article Summary
Introduction
A key debate in research into affective polarization is whether growing partisan animosities are accompanied or even driven by growing policy disagreements between Democrats and Republicans. According to one view, Americans continue to hold moderate policy views while increasingly feeling negatively towards out-partisans. According to another view, ideological and affective polarization are tightly intertwined, whereby Americans have also come to disagree more strongly on policies. The authors set out to examine which one of the two approaches is more consistent with empirical data, asking the following question: To what extent is affective polarization driven by ideological polarization?
Analytical Approach
The authors draw on two types of empirical data: the American National Election Study (ANES) and an original survey experiment.
The authors run a series of analyses with the ANES data. First, the authors evaluate the longitudinal development of affective polarization and perceived ideological distance to the out-party on a liberal vs. conservative scale. Second, the authors analyze the consistency of policy orientations by focusing on attitudes toward the following social welfare items: government aid to Blacks, government versus private health insurance, government versus personal responsibility for jobs and living standards, and the tradeoff between government services and taxes. Third, the authors examine the correlation between policy preferences and feelings toward the Democratic and Republican parties, the 2012 presidential candidates, and the difference in feelings toward the in-party and out-party. Fourth, focusing on the 2012 presidential election, the authors study to what extent policy preferences are associated with feelings of anger and fear toward Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.
In the survey experiment, the authors then seek to causally test the effect of ideological polarization among candidates on affective polarization. The experiment features a blocked design, where self-identified Republicans are confronted with a Democratic candidate running in their district and Democratic identifiers with a Republican candidate. The treatment conditions are provided below.
| Treatment condition | Vignette | |
|---|---|---|
| Extreme ideologue | Respondents learn that there is an out-partisan candidate running who is 43 years old and who served for three terms as a state legislator. For Democratic subjects, this candidate is an extreme conservative Republican. For Republican subjects, this candidate is an extreme liberal Democrat. | |
| Moderate ideologue | Respondents learn that there is an out-partisan candidate running who is 43 years old and who served for three terms as a state legislator. For Democratic subjects, this candidate is a moderate-to-liberal Republican. For Republican subjects, this candidate is a moderate-to-conservative Democrat. | |
| Control | Respondents learn that there is an out-partisan candidate running who is 43 years old and who served for three terms as a state legislator. |
Main Findings
The authors first document a substantial increase in affective polarization and party identifiers’ perceived ideological distance from the out-party. Moreover, the authors document an increase in consistency in attitudes toward welfare policies, which they interpret as evidence that Americans’ policy views not only symbolically reflect partisan attachments but are meaningful attitudes among partisans. These policy preferences over welfare spending are furthermore strongly related to the liberal versus conservative scale, which is commonly used to measure ideological polarization. Likewise, policy preferences over social welfare, abortion, and gay rights are strongly related to feelings toward political parties and the 2012 presidential candidates, as well as the difference in feelings toward the in-party and out-party. Similarly, policy preferences were strongly related to feelings of anger and fear toward the 2012 presidential candidates. Lastly, the survey experiment provides evidence that policy extremism among out-partisan candidates increases affective polarization.
Implications
The authors interpret their findings as strong evidence of a tight relationship between ideological and affective polarization. Accordingly, they question previous claims that partisan animosities are mostly unrelated to ideological polarization. That policy preferences are strongly related to partisan animosities furthermore suggests that growing affective polarization is due to substantive disagreements over policies and that overcoming negative feelings among partisans would need to begin with moderating policy preferences.
Questions left unanswered
While the authors point to ideological polarization as a key driver of affective polarization, they omit a discussion of whether policy preferences have become more extreme over time or whether policy preferences have become more predictive of affective polarization.
Methods and Analysis
Was the study and its analyses pre-registered?: No
Did the study rely on proxy variables to measure polarization?: No
Were standard p-value thresholds used (p<.05 or 95% Confidence Intervals that don’t overlap zero)?: Yes
- Largest p-value presented as significant: 0.05
Were correlational results interpreted with causal language?: Yes
Thus, the growing ideological divide between the two parties is driving affective polarization (p. 627).
Limitations / Weaknesses
Whereas the authors focus on the potential effects of ideological polarization on affective polarization, they do not address potential reverse causation. That is, growing partisan affect could make partisans more ideologically extreme, possibly to distance themselves from the other party through their policy views. However, the experiment only tests whether ideological extremeness increases partisan animosities, but not the reverse. Hence, the possibility of a reverse relationship remains, namely, that partisan affect drives ideological polarization and not the other way around.
Open Data & Analyses
Does the article make the replication data publicly available?: No
Does the article make the replication analysis scripts publicly available?: No
Article Citation
Webster, S. W., & Abramowitz, A. I. (2017). The Ideological Foundations of Affective Polarization in the U.S. Electorate. American Politics Research, 45(4), 621–647.
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@article{webster2017,
title = {The Ideological Foundations of Affective Polarization in the U.S. Electorate},
author = {Webster, Steven W. and Abramowitz, Alan I.},
date = {2017},
journaltitle = {American Politics Research},
volume = {45},
number = {4},
pages = {621--647},
doi = {10.1177/1532673X17703132}
}