Political Types
Division Does Not Imply Predictability: Demographics Continue to Reveal Little About Voting and Partisanship
Seo-young Silvia Kim & Jan Zilinsky
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
What are the political consequences of ongoing social sorting? We evaluate the degree of social sorting and mass polarization using the predictability of partisanship and voting decisions as quantities of interest. Contrary to expectations, demographic sorting has not produced a very predictable electorate. Models trained on nothing more than demographic labels from public opinion surveys (1952–2020) predict only 63.9% of two-party vote choices and 63.4% of partisan IDs correctly out-of-sample -- whether they be based on logistic regressions or tree-based machine learning models. Moreover, demographics’ predictive power over vote choice or partisan affiliation shows a surprising stability over time. We argue that while select demographics’ marginal effects may appear to be evidence of social sorting, the joint predictability of political behavior using only demographic characteristics has been, and still is, modest at best.
Are Republicans and Conservatives More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories?
Adam Enders et al.
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
A sizable literature tracing back to Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style (1964) argues that Republicans and conservatives are more likely to believe conspiracy theories than Democrats and liberals. However, the evidence for this proposition is mixed. Since conspiracy theory beliefs are associated with dangerous orientations and behaviors, it is imperative that social scientists better understand the connection between conspiracy theories and political orientations. Employing 20 surveys of Americans from 2012 to 2021 (total n = 37,776), as well as surveys of 20 additional countries spanning six continents (total n = 26,416), we undertake an expansive investigation of the asymmetry thesis. First, we examine the relationship between beliefs in 52 conspiracy theories and both partisanship and ideology in the U.S.; this analysis is buttressed by an examination of beliefs in 11 conspiracy theories across 20 more countries. In our second test, we hold constant the content of the conspiracy theories investigated — manipulating only the partisanship of the theorized villains — to decipher whether those on the left or right are more likely to accuse political out-groups of conspiring. Finally, we inspect correlations between political orientations and the general predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories over the span of a decade. In no instance do we observe systematic evidence of a political asymmetry. Instead, the strength and direction of the relationship between political orientations and conspiricism is dependent on the characteristics of the specific conspiracy beliefs employed by researchers and the socio-political context in which those ideas are considered.
Rumors in Retweet: Ideological Asymmetry in the Failure to Correct Misinformation
Matthew DeVerna et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
We used supervised machine-learning techniques to examine ideological asymmetries in online rumor transmission. Although liberals were more likely than conservatives to communicate in general about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings (Study 1, N = 26,422) and 2020 death of the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (Study 2, N = 141,670), conservatives were more likely to share rumors. Rumor-spreading decreased among liberals following official correction, but it increased among conservatives. Marathon rumors were spread twice as often by conservatives pre-correction, and nearly 10 times more often post-correction. Epstein rumors were spread twice as often by conservatives pre-correction, and nearly, eight times more often post-correction. With respect to ideologically congenial rumors, conservatives circulated the rumor that the Clinton family was involved in Epstein’s death 18.6 times more often than liberals circulated the rumor that the Trump family was involved. More than 96% of all fake news domains were shared by conservative Twitter users.
Stable Views in a Time of Tumult: Assessing Trends in US Public Opinion, 2007–20
Daniel Hopkins
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The violent conclusion of Trump's 2017–21 presidency has produced sobering reassessments of American democracy. Elected officials' actions necessarily implicate public opinion, but to what extent did Trump's presidency and its anti-democratic efforts reflect shifts in public opinion in prior years? Were there attitudinal changes that served as early-warning signs? We answer those questions via a fifteen-wave, population-based panel spanning 2007 to 2020. Specifically, we track attitudes on system legitimacy and election fairness, assessments of Trump and other politicians, and open-ended explanations of vote choice and party perceptions. Across measures, there was little movement in public opinion foreshadowing Trump's norm-upending presidency, though levels of out-party animus were consistently high. Recent shifts in public opinion were thus not a primary engine of the Trump presidency's anti-democratic efforts or their violent culmination. Such stability suggests that understanding the precipitating causes of those efforts requires attention to other actors, including activists and elites.
Parents’ Political Ideology Predicts How Their Children Punish
Rachel Leshin et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
From an early age, children are willing to pay a personal cost to punish others for violations that do not affect them directly. Various motivations underlie such “costly punishment”: People may punish to enforce cooperative norms (amplifying punishment of in-groups) or to express anger at perpetrators (amplifying punishment of out-groups). Thus, group-related values and attitudes (e.g., how much one values fairness or feels out-group hostility) likely shape the development of group-related punishment. The present experiments (N = 269, ages 3−8 from across the United States) tested whether children’s punishment varies according to their parents’ political ideology — a possible proxy for the value systems transmitted to children intergenerationally. As hypothesized, parents’ self-reported political ideology predicted variation in the punishment behavior of their children. Specifically, parental conservatism was associated with children’s punishment of out-group members, and parental liberalism was associated with children’s punishment of in-group members. These findings demonstrate how differences in group-related ideologies shape punishment across generations.
Partisanship on the Playground: Expressive Party Politics Among Children
Celeste Lay et al.
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The beliefs and behaviors of U.S. adults are increasingly sorted and polarized along partisan lines. We draw on studies of partisanship and social identity formation to argue that children develop partisanship as a social identity during the political socialization process. For a group of children, their partisan social identity produces an affective (and largely negative) evaluation of the political world. Analyzing survey data collected from 1500+ children ages 6–12 in 2017 and 2018, we show that some children develop a partisan identity as they learn about politics that operates similarly to other social identities like gender and race. Children’s partisanship is associated with negative affective evaluations of politics, particularly leaders of the other political party. Using an innovative measurement tool, we show affective, negative reactions in children’s open-ended responses, including when they are asked to draw a political leader. Other children simply learn about politics without developing partisan identities and thus hold more positive affective evaluations of the political system.
Underestimating Counterparts’ Learning Goals Impairs Conflictual Conversations
Hanne Collins et al.
Psychological Science, October 2022, Pages 1732–1752
Abstract:
Given the many contexts in which people have difficulty engaging with views that disagree with their own — from political discussions to workplace conflicts — it is critical to understand how conflictual conversations can be improved. Whereas previous work has focused on strategies to change individual-level mindsets (e.g., encouraging open-mindedness), the present study investigated the role of partners’ beliefs about their counterparts. Across seven preregistered studies (N = 2,614 adults), people consistently underestimated how willing disagreeing counterparts were to learn about opposing views (compared with how willing participants were themselves and how willing they believed agreeing others would be). Further, this belief strongly predicted greater derogation of attitude opponents and more negative expectations for conflictual conversations. Critically, in both American partisan politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a short informational intervention that increased beliefs that disagreeing counterparts were willing to learn about one’s views decreased derogation and increased willingness to engage in the future. We built on research recognizing the power of the situation to highlight a fruitful new focus for conflict research.
Belief in a Dangerous World Does Not Explain Substantial Variance in Political Attitudes, But Other World Beliefs Do
Jeremy Clifton & Nicholas Kerry
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Decades of research suggest a correlation between belief in a dangerous world and political conservatism. However, research relied on a scale that may overemphasize certain types of dangers. Furthermore, few other world beliefs have been investigated, such that fundamental worldview differences between liberals and conservatives remain largely unknown. A preregistered study of nine samples (N = 5,461; mostly US Americans) found a negligible association between a newly improved measure of generalized dangerous world belief and conservatism, and that the original scale emphasized certain dangers more salient to conservatives (e.g., societal decline) over others most salient for liberals (e.g., injustice). Across many measures of political attitudes, other world beliefs — such as beliefs that the world is Hierarchical, Intentional, Just, and Worth Exploring — each explained several times more variance than dangerous world belief. This suggests the relevance of dangerous world belief to political attitudes has been overstated, and examining other world beliefs may yield insights.
Moderates
Anthony Fowler et al.
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Moderates are often overlooked in contemporary research on American voters. Many scholars who have examined moderates argue that these individuals are only classified as such due to a lack of political sophistication or conflicted views across issues. We develop a method to distinguish three ways an individual might be classified as moderate: having genuinely moderate views across issues, being inattentive to politics or political surveys, or holding views poorly summarized by a single liberal–conservative dimension. We find that a single ideological dimension accurately describes most, but not all, Americans’ policy views. Using the classifications from our model, we demonstrate that moderates and those whose views are not well explained by a single dimension are especially consequential for electoral selection and accountability. These results suggest a need for renewed attention to the middle of the American political spectrum.
Place-Based Resentment in Contemporary U.S. Elections: The Individual Sources of America’s Urban-Rural Divide
Nicholas Jacobs & Kal Munis
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on a unique battery of questions fielded on the 2018 CCES and in two separate surveys — one in 2019 and the other during the 2020 election — we study the extent to which Americans feel animus toward communities that are geographically distinct from their own and whether these feelings explain Americans’ attitudes toward the two major political parties and self-reported vote choice. We report results on how place-based resentment predicted vote choice in the 2018 midterm and 2020 general elections and how those feelings relate to other widely studied facets of political behavior such as partisanship and racial resentment. Rural resentment is a powerful predictor of vote choice in both election years examined.
Responsible Majorities? How Group Composition Drives Partisan Expressive Voting
Andrea Robbett & Peter Hans Matthews
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Individuals sometimes do not “vote their beliefs” but rather to affirm their partisan affiliation. We design an experiment to determine the conditions under which voters engage in partisan expressive voting. Democrats and Republicans are asked to vote on the answers to factual questions about politics and are rewarded if the majority of their group answers correctly. To evaluate both compositional and audience effects, we vary the number of affected co-partisans and public dissemination of vote totals. We find that voters are more expressive as the numbers of co-partisans in either the population or the voting pool increase, despite the potential costs of such behavior for co-partisans. Our results thus indicate that large majorities will sometimes produce outcomes that all could regret.
Analyzing Attention to Scandal on Twitter: Elites Sell What Supporters Buy
Seth Warner
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scandal has been described as socially constructed, in that some combination of the public, the media, and the political elite agrees that a transgression has occurred. This study is among the first to directly observe the “scandal as a construct” premise, using time-series data to estimate how each group’s attention to scandal affects that of every other. These data, collected from Twitter by Barberá et al. (2019), measure the daily tweet volume of media outlets, Members of Congress, and samples of the public in relation to four Obama Administration scandals. Granger causality testing and impulse response functions show, as expected, that a jump in scandal-related tweets by one group affects the tweet volume of every other. But the groups wield unequal influence. Over the long-run, elites drive their supporters’ attention to scandal more than vice-versa. However, in two of the four scandals, the opposite effect was seen in the short-run, opening the possibility of a “sounding board” effect where elites are responsive to the initial reactions of their supporters but lead the conversation thereafter. These results encourage further study into how short- and long-term information flows differ, and why groups may lead in some issue areas but follow in others.