Hate trumps love? The implications of negative partisanship for voters and political parties

Strong negative feelings towards political parties are prevalent in many Western democracies. Yet, when negative partisanship is studied, it is often treated as a by-product of positive partisanship. This paper-based thesis challenges this assumption and argues that strong negative feelings towards political parties are a force of their own. What are the implications of negative partisanship for voters and political parties? Through three survey experiments and one field experiment, I show that negative political identities have distinct and powerful consequences for both voters and parties. Firstly, I make a novel theoretical contribution to the partisanship literature by arguing that negative partisanship affects how voters feel about multiple political parties, not just the one that they dislike. In line with the idea of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, I find that negative partisanship can inspire feelings of closeness to other political parties. Secondly, through a field experiment with a political party, I show that cueing negative political identities has stronger mobilising effects than cueing positive political identities. This makes an important contribution to our understanding of how political parties activate negative political identities to their advantage, and shows that invoking these has implications for real-world, costly political behaviour. Finally, I examine if and how disliked political parties can reduce negative feelings towards them and their core issue positions. I find that “normative repackaging”, a strategy which couples an unacceptable policy position with a highly acceptable one, is an effective way for radical right-wing parties to make their core policy positions feel more acceptable to voters. By demonstrating the relevance of negative feelings and identities for voters and parties, this thesis provides an important contribution to our understanding of political behaviour and party competition in Western democracies

The polarizing effect of partisan echo chambers

We are witnessing increasing partisan polarization across the world. It is often argued that partisan ‘echo chambers’ are one of the drivers of both policy and affective polarization. In this article, we develop and test the ar- gument that the political homogeneity of people’s social environment shapes polarization. Using an innovative, large-scale pre-registered ‘lab-in-the-field’ experiment in the UK, we examine how polarization is influenced by parti- san group homogeneity. We recruit nationally representative partisans and assign them to discuss a salient policy issue, either with like-minded par- tisans (an echo chamber) or in a mixed-partisan group. This allows us to examine how group composition affects polarization. In line with our ex- pectations, we find that partisan echo chambers increase both policy and affective polarization compared to mixed discussion groups. This has im- portant implications for our understanding of the drivers of polarization and for how outgroup animosity might be ameliorated in the mass public

Angry white women? How Immigration has become a “women’s issue” and why it matters [winner - written pitch prize]

One of the most common findings about the radical right is that these parties are male-dominated - more likely to be founded, supported, and led by men. I argue that this misses a key part of their success story: women. Acknowledgements: Centre for Experimental Social Science Department of Politics, University of Oxfor

Negative Political Identities and Costly Political Action

Elite and mass level politics in many Western democracies is increasingly characterised by the expression of negative feelings towards political out-groups. While the existence of these feelings is well-documented, there is little evidence on the consequences of activating political identities during election campaigns. We test whether fundraising emails containing negative or positive political identity cues lead party supporters to donate money via a large pre-registered digital field experiment conducted in collaboration with a British political party. We find that emails containing negative as opposed to positive identity cues lead to a higher number and frequency of donations. We also find that negative identity cues were only effective when paired with an issue identity rather than a traditional party identity cue, resulting in a 15% increase in the probability of donating over the untreated control. Our results provide novel experimental evidence on the behavioural effects of activating identities in real-world political campaigns.</span