Partisanship

This article examines whether dispositional empathic concern reduces partisan conflict or intensifies it. Using a large national sample, the authors find higher empathic concern is associated with greater affective polarization. An accompanying experiment indicates individuals scoring high on empathic concern display stronger partisan bias when evaluating contentious political events. The paper challenges the assumption that empathy uniformly mitigates intergroup political hostility and warrants attention from scholars of polarization.

This study examines partisan gaps in politically relevant facts using experiments with incentives.

This study examines “misinformation about misinformation” — the phenomenon of politicians falsely labeling reports as fake news or deepfakes to deflect blame after a scandal. The resulting benefit to politicians is called the "liar's dividend." Two distinct strategies are analyzed:

Which actor identities and social or political cleavages shape public opinion on human rights violations? Building on social identity theory and moral typecasting theory, the research tests the relative impact of multiple identity characteristics on how Americans respond to alleged abuses.

Elite polarization has long been a political science puzzle, but why do American politicians hold misperceptions of public opinion? This study investigates perceptions among 3,765 state legislative politicians regarding nine key issues. Analysis reveals an unexpected partisan difference: while both parties show conservative asymmetry in representation breakdowns, Republican politicians significantly overestimate their constituents' support for conservative policies. These findings are consistent across districts and states when examining descriptive representation gaps.

A June 2019 national survey asks how Americans view the relationship between civilian leaders and the military. The authors find two main takeaways: respondents are unusually deferential to the military on when force should be used and comfortable with high-ranking officers intervening in public policy debates; and opinions about civil–military relations are shaped by partisan alignment, with Republicans less deferential and Democrats more willing to see the military as a check when their party opposes the president.

This study investigates whether geographic polarization—a strong correlation between political preferences and population density at national, state, and metropolitan scales—is driven by voters actively sorting themselves based on partisan neighbors. Using new voter registration data from records analysis, we conduct a simulation study to test the role of residential mobility.

This study asks whether partisan differences among U.S. local police officers translate into different enforcement behavior. The authors merge personnel rosters from 99 of the 100 largest local U.S. agencies with voter files to measure police partisanship and then use detailed operational data from Chicago and Houston to compare actions of Democratic and Republican officers facing comparable situations. They report that police are generally more Republican than their jurisdictions, but that after correcting for multiple comparisons there are minimal detectable differences in on‑the‑ground enforcement by partisan affiliation. The authors do, however, document consistent racial differences: in Chicago, Black and Hispanic officers make fewer stops and arrests, and in both Chicago and Houston Black officers use force less often; additionally, in Chicago White Democrats make more violent‑crime arrests than White Republicans. The abstract frames these findings cautiously and emphasizes limits to detectable partisan effects despite partisan composition differences.

Analysis tests how providing local teachers' union endorsement information affects voter support for school board candidates and then compares that effect to other familiar drivers of vote choice. The study also examines real-world endorsement decisions by unions to understand the motives behind support.

This study investigates whether partisans dynamically change their news consumption in response to negative coverage about their own party or the opposing party—a phenomenon labeled partisan temporal selective news avoidance. The analysis uses large-scale online behavior to capture real-world browsing adjustments to changing sentiment in the news environment.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping labor markets and sparking political debates. Like economic globalization, AI promises benefits—job creation and lower prices—but also imposes costs such as job displacement. This research asks whether AI will trigger the same kinds of backlash as globalization by examining how people weigh the trade-offs between job outcomes and price changes.

A national field experiment convened more than 500 registered voters from around the country for in-depth deliberation over a long weekend on five major issues facing the nation. A separate pre–post control group was asked the same questions to enable before-and-after comparison.

Partisan animosity has surged in America over recent decades. This research shows moral conviction, not just partisan identity, drives affective polarization—heightened bias and hostility across party lines—even among politically similar individuals.

A large, representative sample (N = 5,750) of American respondents was exposed to fabricated videos of public officials synthesized by deep learning (“deepfakes”) and to comparable misinformation in other formats (text headlines, audio). Two experiments used a novel collection of deepfakes created in collaboration with tech-industry partners to compare credibility judgments, affective reactions, and detection accuracy across media types.

Longitudinal voter files track partisan registrations and switches across U.S. neighborhoods from 2008 through 2020. These records are used to measure how exposure to partisan neighbors correlates with individual party switching over time.

Researchers examine the surprising rise of affective polarization among American partisans. Using implicit, explicit, and behavioral measures, they demonstrate how negative feelings toward opposing parties have become ingrained.

Granular geographic data open new possibilities for examining how neighborhoods form and how they shape political life, but the subjective nature of neighborhood boundaries creates measurement and modeling challenges. An open-source, map-based survey instrument is introduced to let residents draw their own neighborhoods, and a statistical model is proposed to analyze how respondent characteristics and local-area features determine these subjective boundaries.

This study asks whether offering compensation to concentrated opponents can increase public support for politically difficult reforms. The authors present arguments for and against “buyouts” and then test public attitudes using survey experiments about three reform cases: phasing out coal energy, simplifying tax filing, and granting amnesty to dictators. They report that buyouts can attract majority support but that approval varies with partisanship and program design: buyouts directed to workers receive higher approval than those for firms. The abstract emphasizes that moral objections — a reluctance to reward actors who obstruct beneficial reforms — and a credibility problem (supporters’ willingness to renege on payments after reform) constrain the democratic viability of buyouts. The authors conclude that buyouts may make stalled reforms politically feasible, but their acceptability depends on careful institutional design and public perceptions.

Campaign promises can change who votes for whom. This analysis uses a sharp eligibility rule tied to children’s dates of birth to estimate the causal impact of a German conservative party’s pledge to expand social benefits on party alignment.

How do protests shape incumbent support in lower-income democracies? An unexpected anti-government demonstration in Ghana that intersected a planned field survey provides a natural experiment to answer this question.

This article asks which long-standing predispositions actually move voters' policy attitudes: core political values or more commonly cited anchors like partisanship and symbolic ideology. It focuses on two specific value orientations—traditionalist and egalitarian—and asks whether these values lead voters to change their issue stances over time, including on new issues that emerge in public debate.

This article examines survey data from the 2016 U.S. election, comparing it with prior election surveys.

The idea that Americans routinely shun or “cancel” disagreeable speakers is widespread. This study measures how common such sanctioning really is, what motivates it, and how people perceive others’ willingness to cancel.

Does local law enforcement vary by partisan politics? A new study examines this question through sheriff cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Using a regression discontinuity design on data from over 3,200 partisan elections and records of actual sheriff actions reveals surprising results: Democrat and Republican sheriffs show similar compliance rates despite being elected differently. This suggests law enforcement decisions aren't strongly driven by partisanship when officers have broad authority.

This study compares party systems inside bicameral legislatures by using newly available data on upper‑chamber elections. It examines two dimensions of inter‑chamber similarity: partisan congruence (how similar party composition is between lower and upper chambers) and a new measure, nationalization congruence (how similar the geographic or national reach of parties is across the two chambers). The analysis traces how these forms of congruence vary across countries and over time and links them to the power of the upper chamber (symmetry).

This paper reevaluates measures of partisan symmetry proposed for practical use and clarified in Katz, King, and Rosenblatt (2020, American Political Science Review 114, 164–178). Attention centers on whether commonly used quantitative scores actually capture meaningful partisan fairness when applied to real-world vote patterns and redistricting decisions.

Does your ethnic identity change because of politics? New research suggests identities are not fixed but can be reshaped by partisan alignment. Using a 4-year panel dataset, this study finds that political partisans actively shift their self-perceptions to align with group stereotypes as the nation's two coalitions become increasingly distinct along demographic lines. Key findings reveal ethnicity and religion switching tied directly to past partisan identification. This challenges long-held assumptions about identity stability and shows how politics can reshape fundamental aspects of social self-categorization.

This study demonstrates how increased connectivity eroded local media resources, leading to more partisan electorates. Consequently, US legislators shifted towards prioritizing national interests over constituency concerns—a move traditionally viewed as politically risky.

This article examines how partisan alignment influences voter turnout. Focusing on redistricting processes, it explores the mechanisms through which aligning districts with party preferences affects electoral participation.

Government procurement isn't always competitive. This research examines partisan favoritism in U.S. federal contracts during 2003-2015.

New findings challenge simplistic views of partisan media consumption.

This study introduces a novel measure of partisan alignment between firms and employees in the US using data from 1,691,790 campaign contribution filings linked to PAC donations. Analysis reveals that employee political contributions strongly correlate with their employers' party affiliations. Key findings show significant associations between firm-level factors (e.g., industry type) and occupation characteristics with this alignment pattern. The unique dataset enables easy integration with external data sources for industries, firms, and occupations—offering detailed insights into how corporate political influence may shape employee politics.

Interest groups' lobbying activity may contribute significantly to U.S. legislative polarization.

Negative partisanship—disliking the other party more than liking one's own—and positive partisanship (enjoyment of belonging to a party) both significantly influenced voting behavior in 2016. A survey examined these dynamics, finding that negative sentiment often outweighed positive enthusiasm and contributed substantially to Trump's victory. This study explores how resentment toward opponents shaped electoral outcomes.

This study investigates the allocation patterns within a long-running federal development fund in Pakistan, specifically examining whether spending adheres to rules-based principles despite political contexts.

This study investigates how summary fact-checking data influences perceptions of politician accuracy and favorability. Unlike individual statement assessments, it provides a comprehensive view across multiple claims over time.

This paper explores how multiracial identity influences political preferences.

Do strong partisans show consistent preferences on economic development policies despite differing opinions at the national level? This study employs conjoint survey experiments in eight US metropolitan areas to investigate partisan sorting versus polarization. We find that while party identification strongly shapes preferences for local economic development issues, these policy positions remain largely similar across voters regardless of their political alignment. Unlike national politics where partisans diverge sharply on most policies, this research suggests a greater potential for bipartisan agreement and cooperation in urban governance.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought widespread attention to correcting health-related misperceptions. This research examines how effective corrections are when combined with scientific consensus messages or partisan viewpoints. A survey experiment was conducted using field experiments across three topics: COVID-19 threat, climate change threat, and vaccine efficacy.

Judicial power is essential for democratic consolidation and rule of law. While conventional wisdom suggests public support stems from apolitical factors, this research argues it may be driven by partisan motivations tied to the executive.

Does partisanship override voters' reactions to sexual harassment allegations? This study investigates how partisan identity and sexist attitudes shape responses to #MeToo scandals.

This article examines whether Americans overestimate economic mobility.

The parties-as-networks approach has transformed how we understand American political parties. While most research focused on national-level variations in partisan connections, this study addresses a critical gap by analyzing state-level party networks.

Existing studies reveal that survey respondents are sensitive to information sources regarding political corruption. This sensitivity appears stronger among politically sophisticated citizens.

This article compares civil rights advancements for LGBTQ populations across two federal systems: the United States and Mexico.

The 2016 election results were viewed as anomalous, particularly the flipping of counties and shifts in low-education voter turnout.

Political text methods are used to estimate ideology and polarization from speech, but unsupervised approaches often assume that the dominant variation in text equals the quantity of interest. This assumption frequently fails in real speech data. The paper assesses how supervised approaches that incorporate party affiliation perform compared with unsupervised models when measuring polarization in parliamentary speech.

Disagreements over political polarization persist despite conflicting interpretations of its types.

New research merges income registry data with representative voter surveys to offer a clearer picture of economic voting. Examining three central topics in the field—pocketbook versus sociotropic voting, partisan bias effects on economic evaluations, and voter myopia—the study finds voters' national and personal financial concerns are intertwined.

Our model explains public reactions to politicized electoral reforms, focusing on rival partisan elites' signals.

This paper examines how state-level actors can drive partisan change.

This paper explores mechanisms explaining legislative voting unity among Canadian political parties from 1867 to 2011. Using all recorded votes from the House of Commons, we find partisan sorting—where elected MPs align with their party's ideological positions—and government agenda control significantly enhance party cohesion over time.

Survey questions that ask who will win an election are common, but they capture winners rather than the underlying vote shares. This study compares that standard qualitative approach with a simple alternative: asking respondents to predict candidates' vote shares.

New studies examine how citizens adjust their views of parties' ideological stances based on political information.