Do Elite Appeals to Negative Partisanship Stimulate Citizen Engagement

Bibliographic Data

ID13057767
AuthorsMia Costa (0000-0003-0365-9882, Dartmouth College, corresponding author), Hannah K Frater (Dartmouth College), Melissa Barales-Lopez (Dartmouth College), Naina Bhalla (Dartmouth College), John J Cho (0009-0008-0619-1932, Dartmouth College), Katherine E Christie (Dartmouth College), Chris Jun (Dartmouth College), Thomas Paul (0000-0002-2380-7830, Dartmouth College), Emma M Wagner (Dartmouth College)
Year2022
Volume20
Issue1
Pages127-145
Publication date2022-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Forum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2194-6183 • E-ISSN: 1540-8884
PublisherDe Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/for-2022-2042
OpenAlexW4282912826
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited38

Scholars have extensively studied whether campaign attack advertisements –messages that attack individual candidates– mobilize or demobilize voters with mixed results. We argue that group-oriented partisan affect in campaigns –messages about the parties in general– is just as important given increasing trends of affective polarization. We use two survey experiments, one right before the 2020 presidential election and the other before the subsequent Georgia Senate runoff election, to examine the effects of partisan rhetoric on several measures of civic engagement. In the presidential election, neither positive partisan, negative partisan, nor personal apartisan appeals had a statistically significant effect on voters’ enthusiasm, likelihood to volunteer, or likelihood to seek out more information about engaging in the election. In the second study, negative partisan appeals led registered voters in Georgia to report much higher levels of enthusiasm about their preferred candidate, but this result was driven by Republicans only. The findings contribute new insights about electoral context and asymmetric affective polarization to the literature documenting the mobilizing effects of negativity in campaigns

Context (archaeology · Elite · Enthusiasm · Polarization (electrochemistry · Political science · Politics · Presidential election · Presidential system · Public relations · Rhetoric · Voting · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology

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