Political Polarization During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Affective polarization has increased substantially in the United States and countries of Europe over the last decades and the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic have the potential to drastically reinforce such polarization. I investigate the degree and dynamic of affective polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic through a two-wave panel survey with a vignette experiment in Germany fielded in April/May and July/August 2020. I 1) compare the findings to a previous study from 2017, and 2) assess how economic distress due to the crisis changes perceptions of other partisans. Results show that the public today experiences slightly stronger polarization between AfD voters and supporters of other parties. Yet, higher economic distress decreases the negative sentiment of voters of other parties towards AfD supporters. I argue that experiencing economic distress increases the awareness of political debate and the responsiveness to government decisions. Thus, in times of broad cross-party consensus, this can translate into public opinion so that it makes people less hostile towards other partisans.

Fear, Hope, and COVID‐19: Emotional Elite Rhetoric and Its Impact on the Public During the First Wave of the COVID‐19 Pandemic

“…These findings indicate that partisans are more responsive to the communication of their own party and carefully suggest that communication effects are more likely to occur among copartisans, which can further radicalize and (affectively) polarize certain parts of the population. The study thereby provides further evidence to research documenting an increase of affective polarization between radical‐right and mainstream partisans during the first wave of the pandemic (Jungkunz, 2021 ).…”

Political polarization of conservation issues in the era of COVID-19: An examination of partisan perspectives and priorities in the United States

“…The politicization of COVID-19, paired with the 2020 election cycle in the US, may contribute to the polarization of conservation issues. Shortly after the first recorded cases of COVID-19 outside mainland China, the pandemic quickly became a polarized issue not only in the US, but throughout the western world ( Bruine de Bruin et al, 2020 , Jungkunz, 2021 , Mordecai and Connaughton, 2020 ). In the US, conservation issues related to the pandemic’s origin were mentioned by major news networks and government officials; however, trust in these communications varied significantly based on political ideology and preferred media source ( Calvillo et al, 2020 , Gollwitzer et al, 2020 ).…”

From Curious Hashtags to Polarized Effect: Profiling Coordinated Actions in Indonesian Twitter Discourse

“…Putting these observations together, we postulate that discovered agents are leveraging on public discourse to disseminate hard-line beliefs to a larger group through a context in which the public will be more sympathetic. These information operations actions created polarized discourse -which would slow down both public resolve and government response if a crisis brewed around that topic; an example happened during the COVID19 pandemic [47].…”