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

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 attitu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of experimental political science Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 75 - 84
Main Author Kingzette, Jon
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.01.2021
Subjects
Attitudes
General public
Hypotheses
Partisanship
Polarization
Political parties
Political science
Politicians
Polls & surveys
Replications
affective polarization
political parties
survey research
partisanship
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Summary: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.
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ISSN:2052-2630
2052-2649
DOI:10.1017/XPS.2020.9