Greatly divided
Presidents and Polarization of the American Electorate
Dan Wood & Soren Jordan
Presidential Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars widely understand that the U.S. electorate has become increasingly polarized since the 1980s. However, little rigorous statistical work evaluates the role of the American president in this process. A potential reason for the lack of rigorous statistical work could be measurement limitations. Previous work has also not separated out how presidents affect fellow and opposing partisans in the ongoing process. New measures of electoral polarization are presented and evaluated for presidential effects using Box-Tiao multiple impact assessment methods. The statistical results show that post-1980 presidents have been central to electoral polarization generally and to polarization of both the president's fellow and opposing partisans specifically.
Local Union Organization and Law Making in the US Congress
Michael Becher, Daniel Stegmueller & Konstantin Käppner
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The political power of labor unions is a contentious issue in the social sciences. Departing from the dominant focus on membership size, we argue that unions’ influence on national law making is based to an important degree on their local organization. We delineate the novel hypothesis that the horizontal concentration of union members within electoral districts matters. To test it, we draw on administrative records and map the membership size and concentration of local unions to districts of the US House of Representatives, 2003–12. We find that, controlling for membership size, representatives from districts with less concentrated unions have more liberal voting records than their peers. This concentration effect survives numerous district controls and relaxing OLS assumptions. While surprising for several theoretical perspectives, it is consistent with theories based on social incentives. These results have implications for our broader understanding of political representation and the role of groups in democratic politics.
The spread of true and false news online
Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy & Sinan Aral
Science, 9 March 2018, Pages 1146-1151
Abstract:
We investigated the differential diffusion of all of the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ~126,000 stories tweeted by ~3 million people more than 4.5 million times. We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organizations that exhibited 95 to 98% agreement on the classifications. Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.
Facebook news and (de)polarization: Reinforcing spirals in the 2016 US election
Michael Beam, Myiah Hutchens & Jay Hmielowski
Information, Communication & Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
The rise of social media, and specifically Facebook, as a dominant force in the flow of news in the United States has led to concern that people incur greater isolation from diverse perspectives through filter bubbles (from algorithmic filtering) and echo chambers (from an information environment populated by social recommendations coming from overwhelmingly like-minded others). This evolution in news diffusion comes at a time when Americans report increased affective partisan polarization. In particular, evidence shows increasingly negative attitudes about out-party members. Based on selective exposure and reinforcing spirals model perspectives, we examined the reciprocal relationship between Facebook news use and polarization using national 3-wave panel data collected during the 2016 US Presidential Election. Over the course of the campaign, we found media use and attitudes remained relatively stable. Our results also showed that Facebook news use was related to a modest over-time spiral of depolarization. Furthermore, we found that people who use Facebook for news were more likely to view both pro- and counter-attitudinal news in each wave. Our results indicated that counter-attitudinal news exposure increased over time, which resulted in depolarization. We found no evidence of a parallel model, where pro-attitudinal exposure stemming from Facebook news use resulted in greater affective polarization.
Polarized Mass or Polarized Few? Assessing the Parallel Rise of Survey Nonresponse and Measures of Polarization
Amnon Cavari & Guy Freedman
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this study, we argue that the perceived polarization of Americans along party lines is partially an artifact of the low response rates that characterize contemporary surveys. People who agree to participate in opinion surveys are more informed, involved, and opinionated about the political process and therefore hold stronger, more meaningful, and partisan political attitudes. This motivational discrepancy generates a bias in survey research that may amplify evidence of party polarization in the mass public. We test the association between response rates and measures of polarization using individual-level data from Pew surveys from 2004 to 2014 and American National Election Studies from 1984 to 2012. Our empirical evidence demonstrates a significant decline in unit response that is associated with an increase in the percentage of politically active, partisan, and polarized individuals in these surveys. This produces evidence of dissensus that, on some issues, may be stronger than exists in reality.
Changes in subjective well-being following the U.S. Presidential election of 2016
Heather Lench et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
This investigation examined predictors of changes over time in subjective well-being (SWB) after the 2016 United States presidential election. Two indicators of SWB — general happiness and life satisfaction — were assessed three weeks before the election, the week of the election, three weeks later, and six months later. Partisanship predicted both indicators of SWB, with Trump supporters experiencing improved SWB after the election, Clinton supporters experiencing worsened SWB after the election, and those who viewed both candidates as bad also experiencing worsened SWB after the election. The impact of the election on SWB decreased over time, with all participants returning to baseline life satisfaction six months after the election. Trump supporters and those who viewed both candidates as bad for the country also returned to baseline general happiness six months after the election. Clinton supporters, in contrast, remained below baseline levels of general happiness six months after the election. Moral and political values, and exposure to media inconsistent with those values, predicted lasting change in subjective well-being. National events can affect how people perceive the overall quality of their lives and these effects are exacerbated when moral and political values are involved.
Brief Textual Indicators of Political Orientation
Bradley Okdie & Daniel Rempala
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Language reflects one’s thoughts, feelings, and worldview. Technology has led to a proliferation of brief communications. Is this brief text meaningful? We examine whether text from brief political and nonpolitical communications reflect political ideology. Student responses to their ideological foundations (Study 1), brief snippets of unanimous Supreme Court verdicts (Study 2), and celebrity tweets (Study 3) were textually analyzed to examine whether they contained perceived threat and resistance to change content and whether this predicted the authors’ political affiliation. Across three studies, words related to resistance to change, but not perceived threat, were related to political ideology such that conservatives were more likely to include resistance-to-change-related words in their responses compared with liberals. These results suggest that brief text, even when not overtly political, reflects one’s political ideology. The increase in brief text production via new technology and its ability to predict political ideology make these findings particularly meaningful.
Growing Apart? Partisan Sorting in Canada, 1992–2015
Anthony Kevins & Stuart Soroka
Canadian Journal of Political Science, March 2018, Pages 103-133
Abstract:
Recent decades have been marked by increasingly divided partisan opinion in the US. This study investigates whether a similar trend might be occurring in Canada. It does so by examining redistributive preferences, using Canadian Election Studies data from every election since 1992. Results suggest that Canada has experienced a surge in partisan sorting that is comparable to that in the US. Over time, like-minded citizens have increasingly clustered into parties, with increasingly stark divisions between partisans.
Political Alignment, Attitudes Toward Government and Tax Evasion
Julie Berry Cullen, Nicholas Turner & Ebonya Washington
NBER Working Paper, February 2018
Abstract:
We ask whether attitudes toward government play a causal role in the evasion of U.S. personal income taxes. We first use individual-level survey data to demonstrate a link between sharing the party of the president and trust in the administration generally and opinions on taxation and spending policy, more specifically. Next, we move to the county level, and measure tax behavior as elections, decided by the voting behavior in swing-states, push voters in partisan counties into and out of alignment with the party of the president. Using IRS data, we find that reported taxable income increases as a county moves into alignment, with the increases concentrated in income sources that are easily evaded, due to lack of third-party reporting. Corroborating the view that evasion falls, potentially suspect EITC claims and audit rates also fall. Our results provide real-world evidence that a positive outlook on government lowers tax evasion.
Accounting for the Decreasing Willingness of U.S. High School Seniors to Protest, 1976–2015
Hyun Woo Kim & John McCarthy
Social Currents, forthcoming
Abstract:
Protest waves ebb and flow in contemporary America. Willingness to protest is a key precursor to a fledgling citizen’s potential for eventually being mobilized to participate in a public demonstration. Here, we explore trends in high school seniors’ willingness to protest from 1976 through 2015, employing annual data from the Monitoring the Future survey. After modest increases in willingness to protest that occurred for cohorts during the early-1990s, willingness to protest has steadily decreased for subsequent cohorts. We found that political interest, prior political experiences, and social engagement have a significant impact on time-series and cross-sectional variations in the willingness to protest for all cohorts. We address the larger implications of our research findings for theories of political participation and social movements.
Can Deliberative Minipublics Influence Public Opinion? Theory and Experimental Evidence
Sean Ingham & Ines Levin
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Deliberative minipublics are small groups of citizens who deliberate together about a policy issue and convey their conclusions to decision makers. Theorists have argued that deliberative minipublics can give observers evidence about counterfactual, “enlightened” public opinion — what the people would think about an issue if they had the opportunity to deliberate with their fellow citizens. If the conclusions of a deliberative minipublic are received in this spirit and members of the public revise their opinions upon learning them, then deliberative minipublics could be a means of bringing actual public opinion into closer conformity with counterfactual, enlightened public opinion. We formalize a model of this theory and report the results of a survey experiment designed to test its predictions. The experiment produced evidence that learning the conclusions of a deliberative minipublic influenced respondents’ policy opinions, bringing them into closer conformity with the opinions of the participants in the deliberative minipublic.
When Social Media Become Hostile Media: An Experimental Examination of News Sharing, Partisanship, and Follower Count
Tae Kyoung Lee, Youngju Kim & Kevin Coe
Mass Communication and Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines whether the characteristics of those who share news articles on social media influences the hostile media effect. In an experiment, participants read a news article shared by one of four Twitter users, 2 (Republican vs. Democrat) X 2 (21 vs. 503 K followers). Consistent with the hostile media effect, both Republicans and Democrats believed a news article shared by a Twitter user from an opposing political party was more biased than one shared by a Twitter user from the same political party. As the Twitter account has more followers, on the other hand, this effect was more prominent among Republicans and less prominent among Democrats.
Effects of physical attractiveness on political beliefs
Rolfe Daus Peterson & Carl Palmer
Politics and the Life Sciences, Fall 2017, Pages 3-16
Abstract:
Physical attractiveness is an important social factor in our daily interactions. Scholars in social psychology provide evidence that attractiveness stereotypes and the “halo effect” are prominent in affecting the traits we attribute to others. However, the interest in attractiveness has not directly filtered down to questions of political behavior beyond candidates and elites. Utilizing measures of attractiveness across multiple surveys, we examine the relationship between attractiveness and political beliefs. Controlling for socioeconomic status, we find that more attractive individuals are more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republican. These findings suggest an additional mechanism for political socialization that has further implications for understanding how the body intertwines with the social nature of politics.
Southern realignment, party sorting, and the polarization of American primary electorates, 1958–2012
Seth Hill & Chris Tausanovitch
Public Choice, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many scholars have argued that primary elections are an important factor in the polarization of the American Congress. Yet little research measures change in the policy preferences of primary electorates to evaluate the connection directly. We create the first explicit measures of the preferences of primary voters over the last 60 years using a Bayesian item-response theory model. Although the overall distribution of population preferences has changed little, the preferences of primary voters are now much more related to the party of the primary that they attend. We show that liberals are much more likely to turn out in Democratic primaries and conservatives are much more likely to turn out in Republican primaries. We estimate that the divergence of primary from general electorates is six times larger in 2012 than in 1958 owing to this “primary sorting”. This trend began with the emergence of the Southern Republicans. As the Republican party became viable, conservative Southerners switched to Republican primaries leading to a leftward shift in Democratic primary electorates. Nationwide, primary sorting began sometime after it began in the South. We speculate that Southern realignment played a clarifying role that contributed to subsequent sorting of primary electorates nationwide.
It’s Personal: The Big Five Personality Traits and Negative Partisan Affect in Polarized U.S. Politics
Steven Webster
American Behavioral Scientist, forthcoming
Abstract:
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.