Both Sides
Seeing Red and Blue: Assessing How Americans Understand Geographic Polarization, Secession, and the Value of Federalism
Nicholas Jacobs
Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Spring 2024, Pages 201-227
Abstract:
This article examines how public perceptions about the divide between blue and red states shape attitudes about secession in the United States. Through a nationally representative survey of the adult American population, I measure how individuals perceive political differences between states, and demonstrate that as perceptions of political differences increase, so too does support for secession. Measured through multiple questions and an experimental design, these findings demonstrate a previously underexplored dynamic of the country's partisan divisions. Both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to support secession as their awareness of the "red" and "blue" divide increases -- an attitude that is statistically independent from other beliefs that motivate partisan animosity in the contemporary United States, such as populism, racial resentment, affective polarization, and ideology. While talk of an impending "civil war" may be exaggerated, the widespread prevalence of secessionist beliefs shows that the legitimacy of the country's federal bargain is challenged by political nationalization.
Media Slant and Public Policy Views
Milena Djourelova et al.
AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024, Pages 684-689
Abstract:
We study how exposure to partisan news channels (i.e., Fox News vs. MSNBC) affects individual views on four policy issues -- climate change, gun rights, abortion, and immigration. First, using GPT to annotate news transcripts, we document large differences in the way the two networks cover these issues. Second, exploiting exogenous variation in viewership due to channels' positions in cable lineups, we show that exposure to Fox News (MSNBC) is associated with more conservative (progressive) views, even when controlling for self-reported ideology and party affiliation. Our findings indicate that partisan media contribute to the rise of political polarization in the US.
Reputational costs of receptiveness: When and why being receptive to opposing political views backfires
Mohamed Hussein & Christian Wheeler
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
A fast-growing body of research finds that receptiveness to opposing political views carries reputational benefits. A different body of research finds that opposing political views and the people who hold them are seen as repugnant. How could it be that people receptive to opposing political ideas are viewed positively when the political opponents they are receptive to are seen negatively? In seven main (N = 5,286) and nine supplemental studies (N = 3,983 participants in online studies; N = 124,493 observations in field data), we reconcile this tension by arguing that the identity of the person one is receptive to determines whether receptiveness carries reputational benefits or costs. When the information source belongs to the opposing party, receptiveness to opposing political views often carries reputational costs. We find these reputational costs across both strong and weak signals of receptiveness, eight different political and social issues, and multiple types of prototypical out-party sources. We argue that these costs arise because members of the opposing party are frequently stereotyped as immoral, and thus receptiveness to their ideas is seen negatively. As a boundary condition, we find that the costs of receptiveness are pronounced for sources who are prototypical of the out-party and attenuate (or even reverse) for sources who are nonprototypical. These findings resolve a seeming contradiction between two distinct literatures in psychology, contribute to a rapidly expanding literature on the interpersonal consequences of receptiveness, and lay the groundwork for understanding novel barriers to, and ultimately solutions for, the lack of cross-party openness and political polarization.
Political Language in Economics
Zubin Jelveh, Bruce Kogut & Suresh Naidu
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does academic writing in economics reflect the political orientation of economists? We use machine learning to measure partisanship in academic economics articles. We predict observed political behavior of a subset of economists using the phrases from their academic articles, show good out-of-sample predictive accuracy, and then predict partisanship for all economists. We then use these predictions to examine patterns of political language in economics. We estimate journal-specific effects on predicted ideology, controlling for author and year fixed effects, that accord with existing survey-based measures. We show considerable sorting of economists into fields of research by predicted partisanship. We also show that partisanship is detectable even within fields, even across those estimating the same theoretical parameter. Using policy-relevant parameters collected from previous meta-analyses, we then show that imputed partisanship is correlated with estimated parameters, such that the implied policy prescription is consistent with partisan leaning. For example, we find that going from the most left-wing authored estimate of the taxable top income elasticity to the most right-wing authored estimate decreases the optimal tax rate from 84% to 58%.
Left behind: Partisan identity, stock market participation, and wealth inequality
Da Ke
Journal of Banking & Finance, July 2024
Abstract:
This paper investigates whether and how opposing partisans differ in their wealth accumulation. Using microdata from a longitudinal U.S. household survey, I document that Democrats are on average 11% less likely than Republicans to participate in the stock market. Moreover, the partisan gap widens sharply, by 13%, under Democratic presidencies, precisely when the stock market returns are substantially higher. This dynamic pattern accounts for more than half of the discrepancy in wealth accumulation between Democrats and Republicans over presidential cycles. A decomposition exercise uncovers two underlying forces in opposite directions: while the partisan gap in stock market participation through directly held investment accounts narrows during Democratic presidencies, the narrowing gap is dominated by the widening partisan gap in stock market participation through retirement accounts during the same periods. I further provide speculative evidence that the widening gap is related to job changes, and in particular, entrepreneurship entry.
Tea Party of the Left? Progressive Insurgent Influence in the Democratic Party, 2018-2022
Amelia Malpas
Yale Working Paper, February 2024
Abstract:
Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic presidential nomination twice. But the "political revolution" he sought to ignite continued through progressive insurgents in the House of Representatives. A few, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, defeated incumbents in primaries. Most lost. This paper shows that despite this, insurgents pushed Democrats' policy agenda in a social democratic direction. To uncover how the insurgents influenced Democrats' agenda while most lost, this paper proposes a theory of insurgent-driven party change. It empirically evaluates its main tenets -- insurgent electoral turnover and incumbent policy accommodation -- drawing on interviews and campaign, Twitter, and cosponsorship data. It finds that progressive insurgents achieved moderate turnover, Democrats minimally rhetorically accommodated insurgent policies and moderately legislatively accommodated them with primaried Democrats more likely to do so. Contributing to scholarship on primary challenges and party change, this is the first systematic study of the post-Sanders progressives.
Growing Up in a Polarized Party System: Ideological Divergence and Partisan Sorting Across Generations
Thomas Jocker, Wouter van der Brug & Roderik Rekker
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
American political elites have increasingly polarized over the past decades, which has inspired much research into mass polarization. We study whether there is a generational component to mass polarization by disentangling period, age, and cohort differences while distinguishing two forms of mass polarization: partisan sorting and ideological divergence. Drawing from General Social Survey and American National Election Studies data, we find that partisan sorting has increased across long-standing and emerging issues, while ideological divergence has not. Contrary to expectations, over-time increases in sorting are clearly driven by changes within generations rather than by generational replacement. On several issues, newer generations turn out to be less sorted than those they replace. This tentatively suggests that, partially as a consequence of demographic changes, generational replacement will gradually lead to less polarization in American public opinion as it converges toward more liberal positions.
Sharing News Left and Right: Frictions and Misinformation on Twitter
Daniel Ershov & Juan Morales
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
On October 20, 2020, prior to the US presidential election, Twitter modified its user interface for sharing social media posts. In an effort to reduce the spread of misinformation on the platform, the new interface nudged users to be thoughtful about the content they were sharing. Using data on over 160,000 tweets by US news media outlets we show that this policy significantly reduced news sharing, but that the reductions varied heterogeneously by political slant: sharing of content fell significantly more for left-wing outlets relative to right-wing outlets. Examining Twitter activity data for news-sharing users, we find that conservatives were less responsive to Twitter's intervention. Lastly, using web traffic data, we document that the policy significantly reduced visits to news media outlets' websites.
On the Defensive: Identity, Language, and Partisan Reactions to Political Scandal
Pierce Ekstrom et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated how individuals judge politicians embroiled in scandal. Drawing on social identity and realistic group conflict theory, we predicted that beyond an overall ingroup bias, partisans would be particularly forgiving of in-party politicians who denied or justified their misconduct rather than apologize for it. By insisting that they did nothing wrong, these politicians defend the public image of their party and signal their commitment to partisan goals. We find qualified support for this prediction across three experiments. Participants did not respond negatively to in-party politicians who apologized but did react more positively to those who denied or justified wrongdoing (relative to silence). These accounts worked only for in-party politicians and were more effective for those whose misconduct furthered their party's agenda or whose seat was high-status or pivotal for party goals. In intergroup contexts like politics, people may accept explanations for misconduct that they would otherwise find offensive.
Explaining Rural Conservatism: Political Consequences of Technological Change in the Great Plains
Aditya Dasgupta & Elena Ramirez
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Rural areas are conservative electoral strongholds in the United States and other advanced capitalist economies. But this was not always the case. What explains the rise of rural conservatism? This paper argues that technological change transformed not only agriculture but rural political preferences during the twentieth century. It studies a natural experiment: the post-World War II introduction of new irrigation technologies, which enabled farmers to irrigate otherwise arid land in the Great Plains using groundwater. Difference-in-differences analyses exploiting the shock's differential impact on counties overlying the Ogallala Aquifer -- a pattern validated with remote-sensing data -- show that technological change contributed significantly to the region's long-term conservative electoral transformation. Additional analyses, including comparison of individual policy preferences inside/outside the Ogallala Aquifer boundary, suggest that this was due to the rise of capital-intensive agriculture and the growing power of agribusiness. The findings demonstrate how new technologies made new politics in rural America.
Predicting political beliefs with polygenic scores for cognitive performance and educational attainment
Tobias Edwards et al.
Intelligence, May-June 2024
Abstract:
Intelligence is correlated with a range of left-wing and liberal political beliefs. This may suggest intelligence directly alters our political views. Alternatively, the association may be confounded or mediated by socioeconomic and environmental factors. We studied the effect of intelligence within a sample of over 300 biological and adoptive families, using both measured IQ and polygenic scores for cognitive performance and educational attainment. We found both IQ and polygenic scores significantly predicted all six of our political scales. Polygenic scores predicted social liberalism and lower authoritarianism, within-families. Intelligence was able to significantly predict social liberalism and lower authoritarianism, within families, even after controlling for socioeconomic variables. Our findings may provide the strongest causal inference to date of intelligence directly affecting political beliefs.