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Partisanship continues to divide Americans. Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), we find that partisans not only feel more negatively about the opposing party, but also that this negativity has become more consistent and has a greater impact on their political participation. We find that while partisan animus began to rise in the 1980s, it has grown dramatically over the past two decades. As partisan affect has intensified, it is also more structured; ingroup favoritism is increasingly associated with outgroup animus. Finally, hostility toward the opposing party has eclipsed positive affect for ones' own party as a motive for political participation.

AbstractPrevious work on nonverbal cues has demonstrated the influence of candidates' facial displays on voter preferences. However, the idea that visual cues affect political judgment by signaling the relative social solidarity (in-group vs. out-group status) between candidates and voters has received little attention. We fill this gap by experimentally manipulating facial cues associated with the physical features of gender and ethnicity (Afrocentric vs. Eurocentric-looking) and assessing their effects on candidate support in the context of the Italian 2013 general election. The experimental design is based on a CAWI post-election online survey conducted on a representative sample of Italian voters. We find that group differences between candidates and voters matter, but only among right of center voters, who respond more negatively to party candidates expressing "combined" (party x gender x ethnicity) dissimilarity. Gender- and ethnicity-based differences are, on the contrary, "assimilated" and accepted when the target candidate is from the voter's party.

Gender and race biases persist in western democracies, with male and white candidates still being the norm. Voters may be more inclined to express sexist and racist attitudes in countries with a traditionally male-dominated political system and a majority-white population. As sexism and racism are notoriously difficult to document, and because many people are unaware of their biases toward social groups, we bypass conventional survey measurement and observe voters' willingness to support candidates whose physical features have been manipulated to make them appear more prototypically feminine or non-white. We implemented this approach in the context of the 2013 Italian election, by presenting a national sample of Italian voters with pictures of male and female parliamentary candidates – both unknown and well known. Overall, we found no main effects of gender or race bias in political judgment. For Italian voters, party cues are by far the most powerful indicators of out-group status, and therefore the strongest predictors of candidate perception and support. This result may be of particular interest to other political contexts characterized by strong partisan polarization.

Across a sample of twenty-seven European nations, we examine variation in the level of factual political knowledge in relation to self-reported exposure to news programs aired by public or commercial channels, and to broadsheet or tabloid newspapers. Unlike previous studies, we estimate the effects of exposure to these news outlets while controlling for self-selection into the audience. Our results show that the positive effects of exposure to broadsheets and public broadcasting on knowledge remain robust. Finally, we show that only exposure to broadsheets (and not to public broadcasting) narrows the knowledge gap within nations; relatively apathetic individuals who read broadsheet newspapers are able to "catch up" with their more attentive counterparts.

In the wake of the 1988 election, journalists developed a new format for reporting campaign advertising: the ad watch. Today, stories that critique candidates' televised advertisements are standard fare for newspapers and television news programs. Little is known, however, about the effects of ad-watch reporting on viewers' attitudes about the candidates and about the political process. This article presents the results of three simple experiments involving ad watches aired by CNN in 1992. Surprisingly, participants expressed increased electoral support for the candidate whose ad was scrutinized by the press. We recommend further refinement of the genre, including two-sided ad watches that cover advertisements on a particular issue by competing candidates.

Whether political candidates gain most from television advertising on issues over which they claim "ownership," or when they synchronize their advertising with news coverage; US.