Findings

Their Party or Yours

Kevin Lewis

November 08, 2024

The Political Economy of Zero-Sum Thinking
Nageeb Ali, Maximilian Mihm & Lucas Siga
Econometrica, forthcoming

Abstract:
This paper offers a strategic rationale for zero-sum thinking in elections. We show that asymmetric information and distributional considerations together make voters wary of policies supported by others. This force impels a majority of voters to support policies contrary to their preferences and information. Our analysis identifies and interprets a form of “adverse correlation” that is necessary and sufficient for zero-sum thinking to prevail in equilibrium.


Testing Theories of Threat, Individual Difference, and Ideology: Little Evidence of Personality-Based Individual Differences in Ideological Responses to Threat
Abigail Cassario & Mark Brandt
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming

Abstract:
Recent attempts to establish the veracity of the conservative shift hypothesis have failed to find supportive evidence. Instead, this work yields inconsistent results and reveals considerable individual differences in ideological responses to ecological threats. In two studies, we build upon this work in two ways. First, we test the conservative shift hypothesis across five ecological threats: unemployment, immigration, racial diversity, COVID-19, and violent crime, more than has been examined previously. Second, we test whether, in line with political personality theories, openness to experience and conscientiousness predict who is likely to shift to the right in the face of threat and who is not. In one nationally representative panel study from the Netherlands (N = 11,189) and one nationally representative repeated cross-sectional study in the United States (N = 9,040), we find minimal support for the conservative shift hypothesis and theories that predict personality-based individual differences in ideological responses to threat.


Does the top two primary system moderate the voting behavior of elected officials?
Kevin Henrickson & Erica Johnson
Social Science Quarterly, November 2024, Pages 1970-1984

Methods: Washington State adopted a top two primary system in 2008, which allows us to look at empirical evidence about whether the top two primary actually encourages moderation in politics. We analyze voting records of elected officials before and after the adoption of the top two primary.

Results: We find evidence that the top two primary correlates with moderation in the voting behavior of elected officials, ceteris paribus.


Local Newspaper Decline and Political Polarization -- Evidence from a Multi-Party Setting
Fabio Ellger et al.
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming

Abstract:
How does the decline of traditional news outlets affect political polarization? We provide novel evidence on this question by examining the link between local newspaper exits, media consumption, and electoral behaviour in a multiparty setting. Our empirical analysis combines a unique panel of all German local newspapers between 1980 and 2009, electoral returns, and an annual media consumption survey of more than 670,000 respondents. Using a difference-in-differences design, we demonstrate that local newspaper exits increase electoral polarization. Additional analysis points to changes in media consumption as the underlying mechanism driving this result: following local news exits, consumers substitute local news with national tabloid news. Our findings extend prior results in the US context to a multiparty setting and shed new light on the causal chain running from changing local news landscapes to electoral behaviour.


Winners, losers, and affective polarization
Josephine Andrews & Yu-Shiuan Huang
Party Politics, forthcoming

Abstract:
We analyze the winner-loser gap in affective polarization. Using data from 37 countries over years 1996-2016 from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), we find that winners’ affective polarization is significantly greater than losers’, and the difference is due to winners’ consistently higher in-party favoritism. These findings are robust when controlling for partisanship and ideological distance to winning party. Although much of the literature focuses on the impact of out-party dislike on affective polarization, our results align with research in social identity theory indicating that intergroup discrimination is driven primarily by in-group favoritism rather than out-group dislike. Given that winners are more likely than losers to support their favored party’s violation of democratic norms, our work suggests that in-party favoritism is an important but overlooked contributor to problematic implications of affective polarization.


Support for Partisan Violence among the Political Fringe: The Case of Antifa and QAnon Supporters
Evan Sandlin & Marshall Garland
Terrorism and Political Violence, forthcoming

Abstract:
Recent surveys have shown that significant numbers of partisans in the United States harbor violent attitudes towards out-party politicians and out-party members. This finding has corresponded with the increased visibility of political fringe groups, such as Antifa on the political left and QAnon on the political right. Fringe groups such as these take ideologically extreme political positions and defy political norms, including prohibitions on political violence. Are partisan supporters of these fringe groups more likely to hold violent political attitudes? Using survey data from the Understanding America Study (UAS), we test whether Antifa supporters and QAnon supporters are more likely to report violent attitudes compared to non-fringe group supporters. We find supporters of both groups are more likely to wish harm towards out-party members, support violent protest, and support various forms of interpersonal violence towards out-party members. The results hold even when controlling for ideological extremity, personality, and affective partisanship.


Political Sorting in the U.S. Labor Market: Evidence and Explanations
Sahil Chinoy & Martin Koenen
Harvard Working Paper, October 2024

Abstract:
We study political sorting in the labor market and examine its sources. Merging voter file data and online résumés to create a panel of 34.5 million people, we show that Democrats and Republicans choose distinctive career paths and employers. This leads to marked segregation at the workplace: a Democrat or Republican’s coworker is 10% more likely to share their party than expected. Then, we ask whether segregation arises because jobs shape workers’ politics or because workers’ politics shape their job choices. To study the first, we use a quasi-experimental design leveraging the timing of job transitions. We find that uncommitted workers do adopt the politics of their workplace, but not workers who were already registered Democrats or Republicans. The average effect is too small to generate the segregation we document. To study the second, we measure the intensity of workers’ preferences for politically compatible jobs using two survey experiments motivated by the observational data. Here, we find that the median Democrat or Republican would trade off 3% in annual wages for an ideologically congruent version of a similar job. These preferences are strong enough to generate segregation similar to the observed levels.


Political Alignment and Housing Transactions
Yongqiang Chu, Michael-Paul James & Cong (Roman) Wang
University of North Carolina Working Paper, September 2024

Abstract:
By matching voter registration records with housing transaction data, we find that voters who share the same political affiliation as the current U.S. President are more likely to engage in housing transactions. When examining buying and selling transactions separately, our findings suggest that this effect is likely driven by politically aligned individuals perceiving lower economic uncertainty. Furthermore, we show that these politically motivated housing transactions result in lower home prices in neighborhoods with a higher concentration of aligned households in equilibrium. This pricing effect is consistent with increases in housing supply in these neighborhoods without corresponding rises in demand.


The Political Transformation of Corporate America, 2001-2022
Reilly Steel
Columbia University Working Paper, October 2024

Abstract:
This article reconciles conflicting views about the political landscape of corporate America with new data on the revealed political preferences of 97,469 corporate directors and executives at 9,005 different U.S. companies. I find that average ideology for these individuals has shifted meaningfully to the left over time, changing from modestly conservative in 2001 to roughly centrist by 2022. This finding supports a middle-ground position between conventional wisdom casting "big business" as a conservative stronghold and revisionist views holding the opposite. Counterfactual simulations and a difference-in-differences design suggest multifaceted causes for these changes, and hand-collected data on corporate stances on LGBTQ-related legislation coupled with an instrumental variables design indicate that individual ideology has large effects on firm-level political activity. Overall, this transformation has profound implications for American politics, as the individuals comprising one of the most powerful interest groups -- corporate elites -- appear to be fracturing ideologically and to some degree even switching sides.


When Politics Trumps Truth: Political Concordance Versus Veracity as a Determinant of Believing, Sharing, and Recalling the News
Michael Schwalbe et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, October 2024, Pages 2524–2551

Abstract:
Resistance to truth and susceptibility to falsehood threaten democracies around the globe. The present research assesses the magnitude, manifestations, and predictors of these phenomena, while addressing methodological concerns in past research. We conducted a preregistered study with a split-sample design (discovery sample N = 630, validation sample N = 1,100) of U.S. Census-matched online adults. Proponents and opponents of 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump were presented with fake and real political headlines ahead of the election. The political concordance of the headlines determined participants’ belief in and intention to share news more than the truth of the headlines. This “concordance-over-truth” bias persisted across education levels, analytic reasoning ability, and partisan groups, with some evidence of a stronger effect among Trump supporters. Resistance to true news was stronger than susceptibility to fake news. The most robust predictors of the bias were participants’ belief in the relative objectivity of their political side, extreme views about Trump, and the extent of their one-sided media consumption. Interestingly, participants stronger in analytic reasoning, measured with the Cognitive Reflection Task, were more accurate in discerning real from fake headlines when accurate conclusions aligned with their ideology. Finally, participants remembered fake headlines more than real ones regardless of the political concordance of the news story. Discussion explores why the concordance-over-truth bias observed in our study is more pronounced than previous research suggests, and examines its causes, consequences, and potential remedies.


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