Authoritarianism has been predominantly utilized in American politics as a predictor of Republican identification and conservative policy preferences. We argue that this approach has neglected the role authoritarianism plays among Democrats and how it can operate within political parties regardless of their ideological orientation. Drawing from three distinct sets of data, we demonstrate the impact of authoritarianism in the 2016 Democratic Party's primaries. Authoritarianism consistently predicts differences in primary voting among Democrats, particularly support for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. This effect is robust across various model specifications including controls for ideology, partisan strength, and other predispositions. These results highlight the potential of authoritarianism to shape leadership preferences within the Democratic Party. We advocate for a reconsideration of authoritarianism as a disposition with meaningful consequences for intraparty dynamics and conclude with practical implications regarding the future of the Democratic Party.

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Are political candidates perceived differently based on the presence or absence of a southern accent? To address this question, we employ an experimental design that explores reactions to political candidates with a southern accent and a regionally neutral accent. We focus on perceptions of three general categories of candidate characteristics: candidate traits, candidate affect, and candidate issue positions. Overall, we discover that candidates with a southern accent are viewed more negatively, and they are thought to hold more conservative policy positions, than candidates with no discernible accent. Our findings suggest that the southern accent provides a heuristic that affects how voters perceive candidates.

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Donald Trump’s first year in office received unprecedented media coverage, with many wondering whether congressional Republicans were “adversaries” or “allies” of the president’s legislative positions. We explore this issue from two vantage points. First, we place Trump’s presidency in historical context by forecasting his Republican support with data from 1969 to 2016. We find that Republicans supported Trump’s legislative positions in 2017 at levels consistent with expectations, contrary to the views of some. Second, we explore the factors that explain why Republican lawmakers supported or opposed their party’s president. We find that conservative and establishment Republicans were more likely to support Trump, contrary to some claims, while female Republicans and those representing affluent, non-white districts were more likely to oppose Trump. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of these results, including the role of identity in contemporary American politics and the possible realignment of the GOP.

In political psychology, positive projection happens when we perceive the positions of liked candidates as closer to our own positions while negative projection means we perceive the positions of disliked candidates as further from our own positions. To date, there is still confusion about whether affective feelings lead to perceptions of candidate positions or perceptions of candidate positions lead to affective feelings. This paper pins down one of these causal directions. I manipulate positive and negative feelings towards a fictitious candidate in a survey experiment to introduce them exogenously and examine whether they affect perceptions of candidate ideology. In line with some previous findings, the results indicate modest positive projection effects but no negative projection effects. Explanations for this asymmetry are discussed.

Conservative intellectuals have expressed concern that Donald Trump has tarnished the conservative brand with his authoritarian-populist rhetoric and style of governing. What exactly is Donald Trump’s effect on this ideological label? In this paper I replicate work showing that members of Congress who have openly supported Trump are seen as more conservative than those who do not openly support him. I then test this relationship experimentally and explore whether a pro (or anti) Trump cue alone drives this perception or whether other perceived, unstated issue positions might influence this result. I find that supporting Trump moves candidates rightward compared to a control group, and this effect is about twice as large as the anti-Trump cue which moves candidates leftward. I also find that candidates who support Trump are more likely to be associated with additional issue-related content, which could affect ideological perception. Roadmaps for extensions are also discussed.

The phrase “identity politics” has experienced a recent surge in political discourse. However, its meaning varies for highly informed political groups, leaving the term definitionally vague for the general public. Second-level agenda-setting theory can be used to explain how this phrase is communicated to the public by the mass media, a crucial disseminator of political information. We used a quantitative content analysis of major US publications to examine the frequency of this phrase’s use and how it is presented to audiences. We found a surge in mentions beginning in 2016. We also found that it is tied more to the political Left, but there also is a fair amount of linkage to the political Right. The phrase also is portrayed negatively. We advocate for using political communication theories to track emerging political terms in the future.