POLS 1140

Partisanship and
Affective Polarization

Updated Mar 19, 2026

Tuesday

Plan

Today:

  • Huddy (2018)’s critique of Achen and Bartels

  • Review of social identity theory

  • Parties, partisanship and polarization

Thursday:

Class Structure: Assigned Readings Going Forward

Race

  • March 17: White, Laird, and Allen (2014)
  • March 19: Tesler (2012)

Gender

  • April 7: Huddy, L. and Terkildsen, N. (1993)
  • April 9: Egan (2012)

Socialization and Biology in Politics:

  • April 14 Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers, J. (2009)
  • April 16: Alford, Funk, and Hibbing (2005).

Influence and Persuasion:

  • April 21: Mutz (2002a)
  • April 23: Kalla and Broockman (2022).

Neologisms

Attendance Survey!

Click here to have a material impact on next week’s class

Social Identity Theory

Social Identity Theory

Tajfel and Turner (1979) articulate three components of social identity theory:

  • Categorization
    • People categorize themselves and others based on internal and external criteria
  • Identification
    • Affinity
    • Membership
  • Comparison
    • We vs I, Us vs Them, In-group vs Out-group
    • Tend to maximize similarities with in-groups and differences with out-groups

Intersectionality of Social Identities

The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena (Collins 2015)

  • Yes, but how do we study identities in an intersectional manner?

Social Identity and Group Interaction Cramer (2004)

When we conceptualize identity on the level of group interaction, we bridge the individual-level psychological nature of identities and the social processes that create them. (p. 53)

Talking About Politics

Talking About Politics

Talking About Politics

Social Identity Theory in Practice

Social identities are:

  • Socially constructed

  • Vary in strength and salience

  • Relational and intersecting

Critiquing Democracy for Realists

Critiquing Democracy for Realists

Huddy’s critiques:

  1. Group politics is not a hollow exercise

  2. Group-related concerns are legitimate and powerful causes for democratic action

  3. Group-identities are not monolithic and vary in strength and effects

Let’s take some time to review the text, and find specific illustrations of this argument

Group politics is not a hollow exercise

Men’s shifting positions on abortion confirm Achen and Bartels’s view that partisan loyalties are far more influential than political beliefs and ideology, leading them to conclude that “ even in the context of hot button issues” such as abortion, “ most people make their party choices based on who they are rather than what they think” But this conclusion is difficult to reconcile with the authors’ own evidence that women shifted their partisanship to identify with the party that better matched their views on abortion. This is not hollow tribal politics. (p. 4)

In sum, group-linked economic and status considerations shape partisan political preferences among group members. This process may not conform to the ideals of a fully informed democratic citizenry among whom each issue is considered on its merits, but it does suggest a reason- able basis for the public’s political decision making. Feminist women, African Americans, or Latinos who support the Democratic Party and evangelical Christians who support the Republican Party because they believe it is more likely to serve their collective interests are not entirely wrong in their estimate of which party is better for their group (Layman and Carsey 2002; Wolbrecht 2000). (p. 9)

Group-identities are not monolithic and vary in strength and effects

Levels of identification with politically relevant social groups thus vary among individuals, such that group political influence is far from monolithic. Those most strongly identified with a social group will be most likely to support the party seen to further the group’s interests. This process intensifies when social identities align, leading to an especially strong partisan identity. But there are many people who don’t conform to group dictates, do so weakly, or have cross-cutting social identities. Groups shape partisan loyalties, but with greater nuance than acknowledged by Achen and Bartels. (p. 10)

Critiquing Democracy for Realists

Huddy’s critiques:

  1. Group politics is not a hollow exercise

  2. Group-related concerns are legitimate and powerful causes for democratic action

  3. Group-identities are not monolithic and vary in strength and effects

  • How would Achen and Bartels respond?
  • What other critiques would we raise?

Citations and Term Papers: From Name-Dropping to Dialogue

Example debate: abortion, partisanship, and citizen competence

  • Achen and Bartels argue that citizens choose parties based on identity rather than issues (Achen and Bartels 2016).
  • Huddy disagrees and says that women changed parties because of abortion (Huddy 2018).
  • This shows there is debate about whether citizens are competent.

Why this is weak

  • authors are treated like labels
  • no explanation of the evidence
  • disagreement is asserted but not explained
  • reader learns almost nothing about the argument

Some scholars argue that partisan identity often shapes issue positions rather than the reverse. For example, evidence on abortion attitudes shows that men’s views on abortion appear to shift to match their party loyalties, which has been interpreted as evidence that voters often make party choices based on identity rather than policy preferences (Achen and Bartels 2016).

However, this interpretation is contested. Using the same evidence, other scholars note that women appear to move their party identification toward the party that better matches their abortion views, suggesting that issue commitments can sometimes reshape partisan identity (Huddy 2018).

Why this is better

  • explains each author’s claim
  • identifies the empirical example
  • shows the disagreement clearly
  • paraphrases rather than over-quoting

Evidence on abortion attitudes illustrates the debate over whether issue preferences or partisan identities drive political behavior. Some scholars interpret the case as evidence that partisan identity dominates issue reasoning: among men, abortion attitudes appear to shift in ways that align with prior party loyalties (Achen and Bartels 2016).

But the same case also suggests limits to this interpretation. Evidence indicates that many women shifted their party identification toward the party that better matched their views on abortion, which complicates the claim that issue attitudes simply follow partisan identity (Huddy 2018). Rather than demonstrating purely “tribal” politics, the abortion example suggests that identity and issue preferences can shape each other, especially when parties stake out clear positions on salient issues.

Why this is strongest

  • authors are in dialogue
  • evidence is interpreted, not just cited
  • quotations are minimal and purposeful
  • models argument → critique → response

Takeaway for Midterm papers

Don’t just cite authors. Explain:

  1. The claim
  2. The evidence
  3. The objection
  4. What follows for your argument

Tips

  • Quote when the wording itself matters.
  • Paraphrase when the idea matters more than the phrasing.
  • Synthesize when multiple authors are addressing the same question.

More General Tips

  • Write early, edit often
  • Outline \(\to\) write \(\to\) revise
  • Show, don’t tell
  • Don’t beg the question
  • Avoid jargon when possible
  • Be precise when using technical language

Parties and Polarization

What’s a political party?

Many definitions of political parties:

  • Instrumental

  • Organizational

  • Coalitional

Instrumental: Parties Exist to Win Electoral Office

  • Schattschneider (1944): Parties are “first of all an organized attempt to get power”

  • Schlessinger (1991): “A political party is a group organized to gain control of government in the name of the group by winning election to public office.”

Organizational: PIG-PIE-PO

V.O. Key offers an organizational view of parties highlighting the distinctions between:

  • Parties in Government
    • Elected officials
  • Parties in the Electorate
    • People who identify with a party
  • Party Organization
    • People who work for local, state, and national parties

Organizational view of Parties as Networks

Herrson (2009)

Parties as Enduring Coalitions

“Political parties can be seen as coalitions of elites to capture and use political office. [But] a political party is more than a coalition. A political party is an institutionalized coalition, one that has adopted rules, norms, and procedures.” (Aldrich 1995)

Parties as Coalitions of Policy Demanding Groups

Parties in the United States are best understood as coalitions of interest groups and activists seeking to capture and use government for their particular goals, which range from material self interest to high-minded idealism.

The coalition of policy-demanding groups develops an agenda of mutually acceptable policies, insists on the nomination of candidates with a demonstrated commitment to its program, and works to elect these candidates to office. (Bawn et al. 2012)

Poltical Parties

  • Parties are complex.
    • Instrumental
    • Organizational
    • Coalitional
  • Group-centric definitions help explain
    • Behavior of parties
    • Strength of partisanship as a social identity

Partisan Identification

Generally speaking

Do you think of yourself as a…

  • Democrat
  • Republican
  • Independent
  • Other

If Democrat/Republican

Would you call yourself a…

  • Not very strong Democrat/Republican
  • Strong Democrat/Republican

If Independent/Other

Would you consider yourself closer to…

  • The Republican Party
  • The Democratic Party
  • Neither

Independent leaners tend to look a lot like partisans.

Why do we care?

The importance of party identication reflects the fact that—unlike particular social identities, which may come and go as electoral forces—partisanship is relevant in nearly all elections. It shapes voting behavior, of course. But beyond that, each party organizes the thinking of its adherents. A party constructs a conceptual viewpoint by which its voters can make sense of the political world. … like particular social identities tied to the special interests of groups, the reach of partisanship is very broad. For the voters who identify with a party, partisanship pulls together conceptually nearly every aspect of electoral politics. (Achen and Bartels 2017)

Partisanship and the American Voter

Partisanship is an enduring psychological attachment:

  • Formed early in life

  • Transmitted via socialization

  • Acts as a perceptual screen

  • Shapes policy beliefs and vote choice

Partisanship and the American Voter

Partisanship was conceptualized as a psychological identification with a party…. , partisans are partisan because they think they are partisan. They are not necessarily partisan because they vote like a partisan, or think like a partisan, or register as a partisan, or because someone else thinks they are a partisan. In a strict sense, they are not even partisan because they like one party more than another. Partisanship as party identification is entirely a matter of self-definition” (Campbell et al. 1986)

Partisanship and the American Voter

  • Are voters “fools” (Key 1966) blindly following partisan attachments

  • How can we reconcile partisanship with retrospective voting?

Partisanship as a Running Tally

  • Attempt by Fiorina (1978) to offer a rational explanation for:

    • Stability of partisanship

    • Predictive power of partisanship

    • Conditions in which partisanship might change

Partisanship as a Running Tally

  • Individuals begin life as issue voters, but how to process tidal wave of issues?
  • Partisanship acts as a running tally, a summary of voter’s retrospective evaluations
  • Evidence:
    • Simple retrospective evaluations predict partisan identification (voters direct experiences)
    • Mediated retrospective evaluations (voters experiences mediated through evaluations)

Evidence of Partisanship as a Social Identity

Green, Palmquist, and Schickler (2002) conceptualize partisanship as a social identity:

  • The same regardless of how you ask the question

  • Talked about in terms of groups

  • Stable over time among individuals

  • Stable in the aggregate

  • Stable across contexts (campaigns, state and local)

  • More engaged with politics

How would we know?

How could we distinguish between partisanship as:

  • An enduring psychological attachment
  • A running tally of retrospective evaluations

A Model of Partisan Change

\[y_{t,i} = \alpha_i + \beta_i y_{t-1,i} + \gamma_iX_{t_i} + u_i\]

  • \(y_{t,i}\) = Person \(i\)’s partisanship at time \(t\)
  • \(\alpha_i\) = Baseline partisanship
  • \(\beta_i y_{t-1,i}\) = Influence of past partisanship
  • \(\gamma_iX_{t_i}\) = Influence of other factors
  • \(u_i\) = Random shocks

A Model of Partisan Change

\[y_{t,i} = \alpha_i + \beta_i y_{t-1,i} + \gamma_iX_{t_i} + u_i\]

  • Key question is about the value of \(\beta\)

    • Close to 1 -> Retrospective running tally

    • Close to 0 -> Stable social identity

A Model of Partisan Change

A Model of Partisan Change

Summary

  • Theory: Partisanship is enduring psychological attachment central to understanding American politics

  • Revision: Partisanship is a running tally

  • Synthesis: Partisanship is a social identity

Political Polarization

Political Polarization

Take a moment to write down a definition of partisan polarization

Is your definition about:

  • Distance
  • Difference
  • Overlap/Commonality
  • Elites/Mass

If you had to visualize this process, draw an image that illustrates polarization

Polarization in Congress

Pew

Polarization in The Electorate

Source: Pew

What do we mean by ideological consistency?

Source: Pew

Are we really further apart today than we were in the past?

Consider the following stylized examples

Polarization is about distance and overlap

Polarization as increasing distance between parties

Polarization as increasing consistency within parties

Which world do we live in?

Summary

  • General consensus that politics has become more polarized at both the elite and mass level

  • Yet, polarization is a tricky concept and can refer to changes in

    • Distance
    • Consistency
    • Overlap

Affective Polarization

Affective Polarization

  • Animosity across party lines

  • “[T]he tendency of ordinary partisans to dislike and distrust those from the other party” (Druckman et al. 2019)

Measuring Affective Polarization

  • Survey self reports
  • Implicit association tests
  • Behavioral games and experiments

Iyengar and Westwood (2015)

Survey self reports

  • Feeling Thermometers
  • Trait ratings
  • Social distance and interaction

Affective Polarization Has Increased Over Time

Affective Polarization

How has affective polarization changed since 2016?

How does affective polarization vary by partisan strenght?

library(tidyverse)
library(haven)
library(ggridges)

load("../files/data/nes_affectivepol.rda")

df %>% 
  filter(!is.na(affective_polarization)) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(year, ft_in_party, col = "In Party"))+
  stat_summary()+
  stat_summary(aes(y=ft_out_party, col = "Out Party"))+
  stat_summary(aes(y=affective_polarization, col = "Affective Polarization"))+
  theme_minimal()+
  labs(col ="",
       y= "Feeling Thermometer Ratitings",
       x= "Year") -> fig_ap1
           
fig_ap1 +
  facet_wrap(~pid_7pt_f)+
  theme(legend.position = "bottom") -> fig_ap2

df  %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=ft_in_party, factor(year)))+
  geom_density_ridges(fill="blue",alpha=.5)+
  geom_density_ridges(aes(x=ft_out_party), fill="red", alpha=.5)+
  labs(y="",
       x = "Feelings toward Out Party (Red) and In Party (Blue)") -> fig_ap3

Implicit Association Tests

Implicit Association Tests Reveal Partisan Bias

Partisan Bias Larger With Explicit Measures

Implicit Partisan Bias May be Larger than Implicit Racial Bias

Affective Polarization Has Behavioral Consequences

Origins of Affective Polarization

Potential causes of affective polarization:

  • Partisan sorting \(\to\) reinforcing social identities

  • High Choice/Polarized Media environment

  • Political campaigns

  • Homophily and social networks

However the evidence is often mixed or conflicting reflecting ongoing debates and research

Consequences of Affective Polarization

Iyengar et al. highlight the potential non-political consequences of affective polarization in a number of areas:

  • Relationships and social interactions
  • Economic decisions
  • Medical decisions

Did anything strike you as particularly important, concerning, or questionable?

Druckman et al. (2022)

(Mis)estimating Affective Polarization

Take a few moments to review

  • What’s the research question
  • What’s the theoretical framework
  • What’s the empirical design
  • What are the results
  • What are the conclusions

What’s the research question

How much of affective polarization is due to misperceptions of the other party’s voters?

What’s the theoretical framework

Druckman et al. are contributing to the broader debate on affective polarization. They make four claims

H1. People overestimate the ideology and political engagement of out-partisans.

H2. Out-party animus will be higher when out-party targets are ideologically extreme

H3. Out-party animus will be higher when out-party targets are more politically engaged

H4. Affective polarization will differ according to whether the out-party targets are ideologically extreme and engaged.

What’s the empirical design

  • Survey Experimental Design with a 3-wave panel

  • Outcome: Summary scale of four measures of affective polarization

Experimental Treatment

## What are the results

What’s the evidence people:

  • overestimate the ideological extremity and enagement of outpartisans

  • this leads to greater out-party animus

  • which is greater than if folks had more accurate views

People overestimate the ideology and political engagement of out-partisans.

## {.smaller} ### Outparty Extremity and Engagement Increases Affective polarization

When people think of the out-party, they’re imagining the extremes

What are the conclusions

  • Affective polarization is an “illusion” in the sense that when people are asked to evaluate a more accurate version of the out party, they do so more positively

  • The irony seems to be that folk-theory type citizen (engaged, ideological) exacerbates affective polarization.

First Half Review

First Term Paper Structure

Prompt: and grading rubric

  • Introduction (1 page)
  • Argument (1-3 pages)
  • Critique (1-3 pages)
  • Response (1-2 pages)
  • Conclusion (1 page)

The question of citizen competence

What does democracy require of it’s citizens?

  • How you frame this in your introduction will shape the structure of your argument for/or against citizen competence

Arguments for and agaisnt citizen

Think about the topics of the course so far:

  • Political Ideology
  • Political Knowledge
  • Political Cognition
  • Retrospective Voting
  • Social Identities / Partisanship

Within each topic, you should be able to find evidence that supports you’re general claim, and also consider critiques and responses

Ideology:

  • Converse shows that most citizens lake coherent, stable belief systems

    • For example He finds that …

  • Ansolabehere, however, contend that much of the instability in ideological beliefs can be explained by measurement error.

    • They show that when you …

  • Freeder et al. however, suggest that Ansolabhere’s approach overstate’s the amount of instability due to classical measurement error.

    • Instead they argue ….

General Adivce

  • Be specific and concrete.

    • It’s not enough to summarize Converse. Tell us what evidence is used to support these claims

  • Cite work supproting your claims (even better page numbers!)

    • Achen and Bartels’ summary is fine as catch all for some larger literatures we’d didn’t read directly.

    • MLA/APA/Chicago any style is fine. Just be consistent

  • Don’t just plug the prompt into ChatGPT

    • If it looks like you’re copying and pasting from a LLM, we will have a chat…

References

References

Achen, Christopher H, and Larry M Bartels. 2017. Democracy for realists: Why elections do not produce responsive government. Princeton University Press.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2015. “Intersectionality’s definitional dilemmas.” Annual Review of Sociology 41 (1): 1–20.
Druckman, James N, Samara Klar, Yanna Krupnikov, Matthew Levendusky, and John Barry Ryan. 2022. “(Mis)estimating Affective Polarization.” The Journal of Politics 84 (2): 1106–17.
Huddy, Leonie. 2018. “The Group Foundations of Democratic Political Behavior.” Critical Review 30 (1-2): 71–86.
Iyengar, Shanto, Yphtach Lelkes, Matthew Levendusky, Neil Malhotra, and Sean J Westwood. 2019. “The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States.” Annual Review of Political Science 22 (1): 129–46.
West, Emily A, and Shanto Iyengar. 2022. “Partisanship as a social identity: Implications for polarization.” Political Behavior 44 (2): 807–38.