Partisan Affect and Elite Polarization

In: American political science review, Band 113, Heft 1, S. 277-281

Abstract

We examine the interaction between partisan affect and elite
polarization in a behavioral voting model. Voting is determined by
affect rather than rational choice. Parties are office-motivated;
they choose policies to win elections. We show that parties bias
their policies toward their partisans if voters exhibit ingroup
responsiveness, i.e., they respond more strongly to their own
party's policy deviations than to policy deviations by the other
party. Our results suggest that affective polarization is a driver
of the growing elite polarization in American politics. Importantly,
this observation does not assume any shifts in the voters' bliss
points and is therefore orthogonal to the controversy over whether
the American electorate has become more polarized in ideology.