Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-m9pkr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T10:26:42.895Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Who Do You Loathe? Feelings toward Politicians vs. Ordinary People in the Opposing Party

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2020

Jon Kingzette*
Affiliation:
Political Science, Ohio State University, 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH43210, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Scholars, the media, and ordinary people alike express alarm at the apparent loathing between Democrats and Republicans in the mass public. However, the evidence of such loathing typically comes from survey items that measure attitudes toward the Democratic and Republican Parties, rather than attitudes toward ordinary partisans. Using a nationally representative survey, I find that Democrats and Republicans have substantially more positive feelings toward ordinary people belonging to the opposing party than they do toward politicians in the opposing party and the opposing party itself. These results indicate that research relying on measures of feelings toward the opposing “Party” vastly overstates levels of partisan animosity in the American public and demonstrate the need to distinguish between attitudes toward party elites and ordinary partisans in future research.

Type
Replications
Copyright
© The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahler, Douglas J. and Sood, Gaurav. 2018. The Parties in Our Heads: Misconceptions about Party Composition and Their Consequences. Journal of Politics 80(3): 964981.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, James N. and Levendusky, Matthew S.. 2019. What Do We Measure When We Measure Affective Polarization? Public Opinion Quarterly 83(1): 114122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, Sood, Gaurav and Lelkes, Yphtach. 2012. Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly 76(3):405431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto and Krupenkin, Masha. 2018. The Strengthening of Partisan Affect. Advances in Political Psychology 39(Suppl. 1): 201218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto and Westwood, Sean J.. 2015. Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization. American Journal of Political Science 37(43): 1953.Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, Lelkes, Yphtach, Levendusky, Matthew, Malhotra, Neil and Westwood, Sean J.. 2019. “The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science 22: 7.17.18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingzette, Jon. 2020. Replication Data for: Who Do You Loathe? Feelings toward Politicians vs. Ordinary People in the Opposing Party. Harvard Dataverse, V3. doi: 10.7910/DVN/XLVC6T.Google Scholar
Klar, Samara and Krupnikov, Yanna. 2016. Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lelkes, Yphtach and Westwood, Sean J.. 2017. The Limits of Partisan Prejudice. Journal of Politics 79(2): 485501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levendusky, Matthew and Malhotra, Neil. 2016. Does Media Coverage of Partisan Polarization Affect Political Attitudes? Political Communication 33(2): 283301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Lilliana. 2015. ‘I Disrespectfully Agree’: The Differential Effects of Partisan Sorting on Social and Issue Polarization. American Journal of Political Science 59(1): 128145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Lilliana. 2018. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webster, Steven W. and Abramowitz, Alan I.. 2017. The Ideological Foundations of Affective Polarization in the U.S. Electorate. American Politics Research 45(4): 621647.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, John and Feldman, Stanley. 1992. A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions Versus Revealing Preferences. American Journal of Political Science 36(3): 579616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Kingzette Supplementary Materials

Kingzette Supplementary Materials

Download Kingzette Supplementary Materials(PDF)
PDF 357.9 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Kingzette Dataset

Link