Why this matters
Affective polarization threatens democratic politics, yet little is known about how to reduce it among one of its key drivers: party activists. Studying activists over time and in real-world settings is difficult; this study leverages a rare longitudinal dataset to test whether election-day contact with out-party peers reduces partisan animus.
📊 Tracking activists through the 2020 Romanian election
- Pre-registered, three-wave panel survey of members of a new Romanian party, with 8,300 responses collected immediately before and after the 2020 general elections.
- Respondents include activists with different election-day roles, enabling comparison between those who acted as party delegates in precincts (direct cross-party contact) and those with other responsibilities.
🔬 How contact and change were identified
- The study uses a difference-in-differences framework to compare changes in affective polarization among activists with precinct-level cross-party contact to activists without that contact.
- Measures focus on affective animus toward the out-party and its elites.
📈 Key findings
- Party activists were clearly affectively polarized prior to the election, with most animus directed at out-party elites and the out-party as a whole.
- Election-day contact between activists serving as precinct delegates and out-party peers did not substantially or robustly reduce partisan animus.
- All activists—regardless of election-day contact—depolarized immediately after the election, and this reduction in animus persisted when measured two months later.
⚖️ What this implies
- Brief, election-day cross-party contact appears insufficient on its own to lower activists' partisan animus.
- The post-election drop in polarization suggests that broader, event-driven dynamics (rather than single acts of interpersonal contact) can produce durable reductions in affective polarization among activists.
- Findings highlight the importance of studying activists longitudinally in real-world political contexts to understand how polarization can ebb and flow over electoral cycles.
