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Who Do You Loathe? Feelings toward Politicians vs. Ordinary People in the Opposing Party

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2020

Jon Kingzette Open the ORCID record for Jon Kingzette [Opens in a new window]
Jon Kingzette*
Affiliation:
Political Science, Ohio State University, 154 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH43210, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Scholars, the media, and ordinary people alike express alarm at the apparent loathing between Democrats and Republicans in the mass public. However, the evidence of such loathing typically comes from survey items that measure attitudes toward the Democratic and Republican Parties, rather than attitudes toward ordinary partisans. Using a nationally representative survey, I find that Democrats and Republicans have substantially more positive feelings toward ordinary people belonging to the opposing party than they do toward politicians in the opposing party and the opposing party itself. These results indicate that research relying on measures of feelings toward the opposing “Party” vastly overstates levels of partisan animosity in the American public and demonstrate the need to distinguish between attitudes toward party elites and ordinary partisans in future research.

Keywords

affective polarizationpartisanshipsurvey researchpolitical parties
Type
Replications
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 75 - 84
Copyright
© The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2020

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References

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Kingzette Dataset

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XLVC6T
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