The measurement of partisan sorting for 180 million voters

Brown, Jacob R.; Enos, Ryan D.

doi:10.1038/s41562-021-01066-z

Cited by 147 publications

(142 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…In this case, we would observe Parler activity leading to more right-wing incidents in politically moderate counties. Considering the extensive partisan residential segregation in the U.S. (Brown and Enos 2021) and the ability of intergroup interpersonal contact to reduce prejudice (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006), a substantial share of residents of politically moderate counties are likely to be centrist, and therefore candidates for experiencing a rightward ideological shift after using right-wing social media. If this "preferences" mechanism is operating, we should find support for the following hypothesis: H2.…”

Section: Social Media and Political Unrestmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many of these counties' residents are ideologically right-wing-again, a characteristic of the United States' spatial segregation by political affiliation (Brown and Enos 2021)-and some are likely interested in participating in contentious political events. These individuals would act on their interest after coming to believe that doing so is socially acceptable.…”

Section: Social Media and Political Unrestmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Hard-Right Social Media and Civil Unrest

Karell¹,

linke²,

Holland³

2021

Preprint

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Does the use of right-wing social media translate into right-wing protest and violence? Recent research linking social media activity to political attitudes, participation in large, isolated demonstrations, and the occurrence of hate crimes suggests a relationship between right-wing social media activity and subsequent contentious events and violence. However, analyzing this relationship at countrywide scales over many months has not been possible in the absence of reliable georeferenced social media and corresponding contentious politics data. We create a spatial panel dataset measuring 57,505 right-wing social media posts and 1,765 incidents of right-wing unrest in all United States counties from January 2020 through January 2021. Using spatial regression analysis, we find that right-wing social media activity in a given month increased the frequency of right-wing unrest events in the following month. A content analysis of 1.5 million Parler comments reveals that discussions of political events were relatively rare, suggesting that while right-wing social media can be used to coordinate political unrest, this may not fully explain the positive relationship between online and offline activity. Instead, a subsequent analysis of politically moderate and conservative counties indicates that the main effect we observe is driven by shifting perceptions of norms and not changes in individuals’ beliefs or preferences. Our results help explain how social media affect political unrest beyond the conventional coordination mechanism and inform an emerging literature on social media, political attitudes and action, and violence.

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Section: Social Media and Political Unrestmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Social Media and Political Unrestmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hard-Right Social Media and Civil Unrest

Karell¹,

linke²,

Holland³

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This was the largest partisan gap Gallup ever measured for presidential approval in a single survey dating back to 1936. Political polarization in the US is acerbated by high residential partisan segregation, where most Democrats living in urban, suburban or rural areas (high, medium or low density) rarely interact with Republicans, and vice versa (Brown & Enos, 2021). The result is that there is nothing pulling candidates to the middle to appeal to a mixture of voters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Editor’s Introduction: The Promise and Peril of Ranked Choice Voting

Tolbert

Kuznetsova²

2021

PaG

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Dissatisfaction with two-party politics is at an all-time high in the US. As extreme polarization and minority rule persist, a possibility of an electoral reform becomes increasingly more likely. This editor’s introduction discusses the ranked choice voting (RCV) as an alternative to the current single-member geographic districts with winner-take-all plurality elections in the US. The articles for this thematic issue critically evaluate whether RCV lives up to its promise in improving democracy in the US. Like any rule or institutional change, it has benefits and drawbacks. The empirical and historical research presented here focuses on the implementation and use of RCV in the US compared to other countries. This thematic issue offers new insights into the promise and perils of RCV as a way to aggregate votes in elections that ensure that the winning candidate receives a majority of the votes cast.

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“…Moreover, the migration of individuals to politically like-minded communities (i.e. partisan sorting; Brown & Enos, 2021;Lang & Pearson-Merkowitz, 2015), where people primarily live amongst and socially interact with politically similar others, may also elevate social tensions. As Americans increasingly interact with like-minded partisans and identify with overlapping social groups, they become both geographically and psychologically siloed in their partisan bubbles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preference Falsification: How Social Conformity as an Interdependent, Recursive, and Multilevel Process Corrupts Public Knowledge

Elder¹,

Derreumaux²,

Hughes³

2021

Preprint

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Throughout life, people sometimes lie to curry favor or mitigate disharmony with others, a tendency that may be exacerbated under moments of elevated tension. This phenomenon is captured by the economic theoretical framework of Preference Falsification, which describes why people misrepresent their beliefs in the face of social pressures, and how misrepresentation accumulates to broader misunderstandings that can fuel political polarization. We describe why the current political climate may foster motivations to misrepresent beliefs, as individuals are increasingly siloed into like-minded communities with strong pressures to conform to group norms. Next, we adopt a psychological lens to understand and integrate three motivations that underlie individual misrepresentation – relating to an individual’s intrinsic preference, their reputational concern, and their desire for expression – and describe how individual acts of misrepresentation can propagate across social connections to establish misrepresented beliefs as public consensus. Finally, we outline inroads for examining Preference Falsification using psychological methods that may be uniquely suited to elucidate the different social dynamics and issues that elicit this behavior, with the goal of spurring future research. Ultimately, we argue that fostering a more ideologically pluralistic and socially interconnected society may offer one route to reducing misrepresentation and collective misunderstanding, and thereby attenuate polarization and intergroup antipathy.

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The measurement of partisan sorting for 180 million voters

Cited by 147 publications

References 41 publications

Hard-Right Social Media and Civil Unrest

Hard-Right Social Media and Civil Unrest

Editor’s Introduction: The Promise and Peril of Ranked Choice Voting

Preference Falsification: How Social Conformity as an Interdependent, Recursive, and Multilevel Process Corrupts Public Knowledge

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