How Affective Polarization Shapes Americans’ Political Beliefs: A Study of Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Affective polarization—partisans’ dislike and distrust of those from the other party—has reached historically high levels in the United States. While numerous studies estimate its effect on apolitical outcomes (e.g., dating, economic transactions), we know much less about its effects on political beliefs. We argue that those who exhibit high levels of affective polarization politicize ostensibly apolitical issues and actors. An experiment focused on responses to COVID-19 that relies on pre-pandemic, exogenous measures of affective polarization supports our expectations. Partisans who harbor high levels of animus towards the other party do not differentiate the “United States’” response to COVID-19 from that of the Trump administration. Less affectively polarized partisans, in contrast, do not politicize evaluations of the country’s response. Our results provide evidence of how affective polarization, apart from partisanship itself, shapes substantive beliefs. Affective polarization has political consequences and political beliefs stem, in part, from partisan animus.

Political Polarization During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…In particular, outparty animus is stronger than antipathy towards different ethnic groups and it is also asymmetric: supporters of mainstream parties dislike supporters of right-wing populist parties much more strongly than vice versa. Ultimately, affective polarization can shape individual policy beliefs and it politicizes even neutral or apolitical issues (Druckman et al, 2020).…”

Being close to an election does not make health more politically relevant: more experimental evidence during a global pandemic

“…One interpretation of the null result is that public opinion in the USA is so partisan that nothing can move the needle, at least with respect to support for a sitting president. [3][4][5] Yet, when we examine treatment effects among those whose political views lie closer to the middle of the spectrum-and hence should presumably be more susceptible to new information-we still observe null effects, as shown in the original paper. And the other countries in our initial survey-with, arguably, somewhat less polarised political environments-also show null effects.…”

Affective Polarization Did Not Increase During the Coronavirus Pandemic

“…Replication code and data from Nationscape, Druckman et al (2020), and our own survey experiment will be posted upon final publication at https://osf.io/dra7s/. Data from the American National Election Study is available at https://electionstudies.org/data-center/.…”

“…Panel B reports the difference (Republicans minus Democrats) in average feelings towards Donald Trump from ANES surveys in December 2018, December 2019, and May 2020. Panel C reports affective polarization using a panel of respondents fromDruckman et al (2020) who completed surveys in July 2019 and April 2020. TheDruckman et al (2020) data report lower levels of affective polarization because their measures had an embedded experiment that varied the target evaluated (e.g., "Democrats," "moderate Democrats") (seeDruckman et al's supplementary material), and restricting analysis to questions about "Democrats" (not shown) also produces a flat trend with a level more similar to the Nationscape measure.…”