What can American partisan affect groups tell us about different models of partisan affect over a recent snapshot in time? Moreover, what implications do these groups have for political trust over that same snapshot in time? Results from the 2020 and 2016 American National Election Studies suggest that most partisans feel positively toward their inparty and negatively toward their outparty (Classically-Polarized)—consistent with classical approaches to affective polarization. However, some feel negatively toward their inparty and outparty (Double-Dislikers)—more consistent with negative partisanship models. Finally, some feel positively toward their inparty and outparty (Double-Likers). Despite recent work suggesting increasing outparty and inparty animosity, which implies growth in Double-Dislikers and the Classically-Polarized, only the Classically-Polarized grew between 2016 and 2020. Regarding political trust, compared to the Classically-Polarized, Double-Dislikers are associated with less political trust, whereas Double-Likers are associated with increasingly more political trust, suggesting substantive reasons for focusing on each group.
In the age of the high-choice media environment, there is less and less consensus over America's most important problem. Over the last two decades, several studies have demonstrated that agenda diversity—the degree of disagreement over the most important issue—has grown drastically in the U.S. Despite the importance of public consensus in the policy process and for representation, we lack a causal understanding of the mechanisms underpinning changes in agenda diversity. This paper hypothesizes that selective exposure causes greater agenda diversity, as individuals avoid news on issues they are less interested in. This study leverages an experiment (N = 433) to investigate the effect of varying levels of selectivity in the media environment on individual-level agenda diversity. Results support the notion that a media environment that allows for selective exposure compared to forced exposure more typical of the broadcast-era results in higher agenda diversity. These findings support the theory that rising levels of media selectivity contribute to a rise in agenda diversity. The implications of an increasingly diverse national agenda are discussed.
Women’s office seeking has been the subject of considerable research, but how likely a female candidate is to seek one office over another has not. Using a unique data set of office seeking in California local governments between 1996 and 2019, we address the likelihood that women will seek certain types of offices over others; and whether and how female office seeking is affected by the context of local elections. In general, we find that women are most likely to seek citywide administrative offices, followed by school board seats. Local office-seeking by women, however, also varies by jurisdiction size, political context, and over time, particularly for county-level offices. Our focus on offices as a key part of female candidate entry sheds important new light on candidate behavior and the prospects for greater descriptive representation in local government.
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