Political Polarization

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.

Should turnout in mass elections be voluntary or compulsory? Existing normative defenses of compulsory voting often rest on contested claims about a moral duty to vote or the democratic legitimacy of high turnout. This article strengthens the normative case by arguing that compulsory voting can improve democratic outcomes by reducing political polarization—a force shown to increase the risk of democratic backsliding.

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.

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.

This study asks whether reducing affective polarization — people’s negative feelings toward opposing partisans — causally changes intentions to share true or false political news online. Using an experimental approach, the authors report that improving feelings toward out-party members relative to one’s own party produced no measurable change in intentions to share true news, false news, or in the gap between them (truth discernment). They also test an accuracy reminder and find modest evidence that such a prompt can improve truth discernment for respondents who report sharing political news. The paper argues these experimental results call for reexamining the assumed causal role of affective polarization in misinformation spread, while preserving the conditional and limited nature of the observed effects.

This study introduces the first cross-national measure of urban–rural electoral divides that facilitates direct comparison beyond majoritarian democracies such as the UK and North America. The new measure is calculated for each election and political party, allowing comparisons over time and across countries with different electoral and party systems.

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.

This article introduces State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES) for state legislators across 97 legislative chambers over recent decades, measuring who actually advances public policy in the American states.

This research tests whether national polarization over policing changes local politics by making police union endorsements into ideological signals that shape voter choices.

Do citizens favor the use of force less often against countries that share their ideological orientation? This article tests a domestic–international nexus beyond the democratic peace: the authors propose a “left‑wing peace” and a “right‑wing peace,” where respondents are less willing to use force against foreign states that match their own left‑ or right‑wing ideology. The study argues this pattern arises from out‑group bias and that rising polarization amplifies the effect.

What explains ideological splits over which political problems deserve attention? A large survey experiment compares how respondents in the United Kingdom and the United States judge 41 political problems across three distinct dimensions.

A common explanation for growing polarization in American foreign policy points to an absence of external threat. Two mechanisms could reverse that trend: an information mechanism, where clear evidence about an adversary prompts bipartisan agreement among policymakers; and an identity mechanism, where an external danger raises national identity above partisan identity and reduces affective polarization among the public.

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 research investigates political discussion networks among American voters. Using innovative methods, the authors analyze how partisan divides shape conversations online and offline. The findings reveal striking patterns of homophily - individuals primarily discuss politics with those holding similar views despite geographic or social proximity to ideological opposites. This polarization extends beyond media consumption into intimate personal interactions. Key insights emerge from analyzing digital communication platforms alongside traditional survey data about interpersonal political talk. Results show not just that people converse within their own bubbles, but how these bubbles form and persist across different contexts.

This study investigates how targeted political appeals aimed at Latino voters affect the attitudes of white Democratic supporters.

This study examines how controversial police use-of-force incidents impact political polarization.

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

Presidential misinformation about climate change raises concerns, especially during campaigns.

How do Americans choose their neighborhood, job, or candidate when personal interests diverge from group interests?

This study introduces motion detection as a behavioral, video-based measure of social polarization on the U.S. House floor and demonstrates its substantive political relevance.

New research reveals that individuals form genuine cross-party friendships even in highly polarized environments.

The entry of radical parties into parliament leads voters toward ideological extremes. A panel study of Dutch voters confirmed immediate polarization after the 2002 election following a radical-right party's rise to power.

In moderate US districts where political parties switch hands, state legislators' behavior reflects the district's diverse voter ideologies. Our analysis shows that when voters are heterogeneous—like in areas with both liberal cities and conservative rural regions—the ideological gap between Democrats and Republicans is wider than expected.

Voters often conflate party identity with ideology, but this isn't always accurate.

New research investigates how increasing ideological polarization among American political elites influences public attitudes and behaviors.

Presents a class of hierarchical item response models that integrate measurement and substantive analysis of multi-item opinion surveys. Individual item responses are modeled as arising from a latent preference whose mean and variance may depend on observed covariates.

Measuring how polarized legislators and parties are is essential for understanding political change. In Westminster-style parliamentary systems, however, ideological positions estimated from roll-call votes are often uninformative, making valid measurement difficult.

This study investigates candidate entry during political polarization. Laboratory experiments reveal citizens with extreme ideal points enter races more frequently than moderates, despite overall low voter representation rates.

News media play a central role in democratic politics, yet how they affect policy makers remains unclear. This paper introduces the theory of strategic responsiveness — which argues elected representatives are more likely to pay attention to voter preferences when voters themselves are attentive.

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

Existing approaches to measuring political disagreement from text perform well only on narrowly selected texts that discuss the same issues in the same style. This article presents the first viable approach for estimating legislator-specific position scores from the entire legislative speech corpus and for producing detailed, time-varying measures of speech polarization and politically loaded language.

This approach uses multilevel modeling and post-stratification to estimate how legislative outcomes would change under alternative representation rules. The method can simulate scenarios that, for example, boost the share of women in a legislature or change how votes translate into seats.

Why do some politicians block Supreme Court nominations? New research suggests their votes depend partly on the departing justice's ideology. The analysis finds that U.S. senators evaluate nominees along two main ideological axes: their own distance from the nominee and the potential shift in the court's median vote after confirmation. Crucially, this study reveals an additional factor influencing opposition: senators also react to how much a nominee contrasts ideologically with the departing justice.