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The COVID‐19 pandemic has affected the lives of all Americans, but the severity of the pandemic has been experienced unevenly across space and time. Some states saw sharp rises in COVID‐19 cases in early March, whereas case counts rose much later in the rest of the country. In this article, we examine the relationship between exposure to COVID‐19 and citizens' views on what type of measures are required to deal with the crises and how experience with and exposure to COVID‐19 is associated with greater partisan polarization. We find consistent evidence of partisan divergence in pandemic‐response policy preferences across the first six months of the COVID‐19 pandemic: Republicans support national control measures whereas Democrats support welfare policies, and interparty differences grow over time. We find only limited evidence that exposure or experience moderates these partisan differences. Our findings are consistent with the view that Americans interpret the COVID‐19 pandemic in fundamentally partisan manner, and that objective pandemic conditions play at most a minor role in shaping mass preferences.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has affected the lives of all Americans, but the severity of the pandemic has been experienced unevenly across space and time. Some states saw sharp rises in COVID‐19 cases in early March, whereas case counts rose much later in the rest of the country. In this article, we examine the relationship between exposure to COVID‐19 and citizens' views on what type of measures are required to deal with the crises and how experience with and exposure to COVID‐19 is associated with greater partisan polarization. We find consistent evidence of partisan divergence in pandemic‐response policy preferences across the first six months of the COVID‐19 pandemic: Republicans support national control measures whereas Democrats support welfare policies, and interparty differences grow over time. We find only limited evidence that exposure or experience moderates these partisan differences. Our findings are consistent with the view that Americans interpret the COVID‐19 pandemic in fundamentally partisan manner, and that objective pandemic conditions play at most a minor role in shaping mass preferences.

The preference for media that confirms prior attitudes and beliefs is problematic in democratic societies based on dialogue and joint deliberation. Over the last decades, partisan selective exposure (PSE) is argued to have increased along with other indices of polarization. We address the question of the increase in PSE, and possible differences by party, ideology and ideological extremity. Using data from the Pew Research Survey, we analyzed self-reported media consumption in 8 nationally representative surveys from the period 2000–2012 (n = 23,381). We relied on previous research on ideological classification of media outlets to conduct confirmatory factor analyses establishing the existence of two different variables, conservative and liberal media consumption. We predicted latent variables of media consumption using Item Response Theory models and analyzed the trajectories running latent growth curve models. An unconditional growth model revealeda general and sustained increase in PSE across ideological groups over time. Republicans showed a greater increase over time than did Democrats, after controlling for demographics. Introducing ideological extremity in the model revealed no differences in the trajectories of PSE between liberals and extreme liberals, whereas subjects identified as "very conservative" show a much steeper increase in PSE than any other group, whereas conservatives showed the lowest growth over time. We discuss theoretical implications for ongoing debates about political polarization and ideological asymmetry.