Negative partisanship

Based on Wikipedia: Negative partisanship

The Politics of Hate: Why We Vote Against Rather Than For

Here's a question that might change how you think about democracy: What if most voters aren't choosing candidates they believe in, but rather voting against candidates they despise?

This is the core insight of negative partisanship—a phenomenon that has fundamentally reshaped American politics and is spreading through democracies worldwide. And it turns out that hatred might be a more powerful political motivator than hope.

More Than Just Disliking the Other Side

Traditional partisanship works the way civics textbooks describe it. You identify with a political party because you support its policies, admire its leaders, or share its values. Democrats believe in a robust social safety net. Republicans champion free markets and limited government. You pick your team based on what you're for.

Negative partisanship flips this entirely.

Under negative partisanship, your political identity forms primarily around what you oppose. You might not care much about your own party's platform, but you're absolutely certain the other side represents everything wrong with the country. Your vote isn't an affirmation—it's a rejection.

Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, compares it to sports rivalries. Think about how fans of the New York Yankees feel about the Boston Red Sox, or how supporters of Manchester United view Liverpool. Within a fanbase, people might argue about strategy, criticize management decisions, or complain about player acquisitions. But the moment someone mentions the rival team, all internal disagreements vanish. The hatred of the enemy unifies far more powerfully than love of the home team.

That's what's happening in American politics. And the data proves it.

The Thermometer Is Dropping

Political scientists have a tool called a "feeling thermometer"—a survey that asks people to rate political parties and candidates on a scale from zero to one hundred degrees. Higher numbers mean warmer, more positive feelings. Lower numbers indicate cold hostility.

The American National Election Studies has been running these surveys since 1968, creating a half-century record of how Americans feel about their political parties. The trend lines are striking.

In the year 2000, Americans rated the Democratic Party at an average of 59 degrees—lukewarm but positive. By 2016, that rating had dropped to 49 degrees, falling below the neutral midpoint. Republicans experienced an even steeper decline, tumbling from 54 degrees to just 43 degrees over the same period.

Notice what's happening here. It's not that people love their own party more—it's that they've grown to dislike the opposing party with increasing intensity. The gap between how warmly you feel toward your team and how coldly you regard the opposition has widened dramatically.

The 2016 election crystallized this trend in historic fashion. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton became the most disliked major-party candidates since the feeling thermometer was invented. Voters weren't enthusiastically supporting their preferred candidate so much as desperately trying to prevent the other candidate from winning.

The Turnout Theory

If negative partisanship is real, it should change how we think about winning elections. The traditional view holds that elections are won by persuading swing voters—those mythical independents in the middle who could go either way. Candidates who appeal to the center, conventional wisdom says, capture the crucial voters who decide close races.

Political analyst Rachel Bitecofer has championed a radically different theory. If voters are primarily motivated by opposition rather than attraction, then the key to winning isn't persuasion—it's mobilization. You don't need to convince undecided voters. You need to terrify your own base enough that they actually show up to vote against the other side.

Under this framework, negative advertising isn't a regrettable necessity. It's the whole point.

The implications are profound. A candidate who fires up their base with apocalyptic warnings about their opponent might outperform a measured moderate who appeals to reason. Demonizing the opposition could be more effective than articulating your own positive vision.

Not everyone agrees with this theory. David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report points to the existence of Obama-Trump voters—millions of Americans who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012, then switched to Donald Trump in 2016. These voters clearly weren't operating on pure negative partisanship; they made genuine choices between candidates from opposing parties based on some evaluative criteria.

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Swing voters still exist, but they may be a smaller and less decisive group than traditional political analysis assumed. Mobilizing your base through fear of the opposition has become at least as important as crafting messages for the persuadable middle.

How We Got Here: The Ideological Sorting

American politics wasn't always so neatly divided. Throughout much of the twentieth century, both parties contained multitudes. Liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats were common species, not endangered ones. A voter in the 1960s might have supported Republican internationalism abroad while backing Democratic labor policies at home. Party affiliation didn't necessarily predict your position on every issue.

That world has vanished.

Today, Democrats are overwhelmingly liberal on virtually every major issue. Republicans are overwhelmingly conservative. The overlap between the parties has shrunk to nearly nothing. If you know someone's stance on abortion, you can predict with high accuracy their views on climate change, gun control, immigration, and tax policy.

This ideological sorting intensifies negative partisanship. When the parties stood for fuzzy coalitions of competing interests, hating the other side meant hating people who might share some of your values. Now, opposing the other party means opposing an entire worldview. Every issue becomes a tribal marker, and compromise feels like betrayal.

The Racial Realignment

No factor has shaped negative partisanship more powerfully than race.

Beginning in the 1970s, Republican candidates developed what political scientists call "racially coded" or "racially tinged" messaging—appeals designed to attract white voters uncomfortable with the civil rights gains of the previous decade. These messages rarely mentioned race explicitly. Instead, they invoked "law and order," "welfare queens," and "inner city crime"—terms that carried racial connotations without requiring candidates to say anything overtly racist.

This strategy worked. Over subsequent decades, the Republican Party became predominantly white, while the Democratic Party grew increasingly diverse. The racial composition of the parties diverged until they represented not just different policy preferences but different demographic realities.

Large-scale immigration accelerated these trends. As the American population grew more diverse, white voters with high levels of racial resentment—political scientists' technical term for negative feelings toward racial minorities—gravitated toward the Republican Party. Racially liberal white voters and voters of color consolidated behind Democrats.

The result is that attitudes about race now predict partisan affiliation better than almost any other factor. And when race becomes the primary dividing line in politics, the stakes feel existential. You're not just arguing about tax rates or foreign policy. You're fighting over the fundamental character of the nation and who belongs in it.

The Media Ecosystem

Technology has poured accelerant on these divisions.

In the era of three television networks, Americans largely consumed the same news from the same sources. Walter Cronkite told everyone what happened, and while viewers might interpret events differently, they started from a shared factual foundation.

The rise of cable television, talk radio, and internet news shattered that common ground. Consumers can now choose news sources that align perfectly with their existing beliefs—sources that not only confirm their worldview but actively demonize the opposition.

Fox News speaks to conservative Republicans. MSNBC and CNN cater to liberal Democrats. Online media fragments even further, creating filter bubbles where users encounter only information that reinforces their priors. Algorithms learn what content generates engagement—and outrage engages more than nuance.

Studies consistently show that exposure to partisan media intensifies negative partisanship. The more you watch your preferred news channel, the more convinced you become that the other side is not merely wrong but dangerous. Each network presents the opposing party as villains in an ongoing drama. Viewers become more loyal to their team and more hostile to the enemy.

The feedback loop is vicious. Negative partisanship drives media consumption. Media consumption intensifies negative partisanship. And the media companies profit from the polarization they promote.

The Personality Connection

Here's an unexpected twist: your susceptibility to negative partisanship may be partly determined by your personality.

Psychologists have identified five fundamental personality traits that vary across individuals—the "Big Five" framework. These are openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability. Every person falls somewhere on the spectrum for each trait.

Research using data from the American National Election Studies found that three of these traits predict negative partisanship. People who score high on extraversion—the outgoing, socially active types who thrive on human interaction—are less likely to harbor intense negative feelings toward the opposing party. Highly agreeable people—those who are naturally friendly, cooperative, and trusting—similarly resist negative partisanship. And people with high emotional stability—who remain calm under pressure and don't experience frequent mood swings—also show lower levels of partisan animosity.

The logic makes intuitive sense. Extraverts interact with many different people and are more likely to have positive relationships across political lines. Agreeable people instinctively avoid conflict and seek common ground. Emotionally stable individuals don't amplify the anxiety and anger that negative partisanship feeds upon.

Flip these traits around, and the pattern holds. People who are introverted, disagreeable, and emotionally volatile are more susceptible to viewing the opposition as enemies rather than fellow citizens with different views.

This doesn't mean negative partisanship is "just" a personality quirk. Social and political factors clearly matter enormously. But individual psychology shapes how those factors manifest in any particular person.

Beyond America

Negative partisanship isn't unique to the United States. Researchers have documented the phenomenon in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, among other democracies.

A comparative study by scholars at the Université de Montréal examined elections across all four countries. They found something important: positive and negative party identification aren't simply opposites on a single scale. You can have strong positive feelings about your own party and weak negative feelings about the opposition, or vice versa, or any other combination.

This finding contradicts earlier psychological models that placed positive and negative attitudes on a single continuum—where being strongly pro-Democrat automatically meant being equally anti-Republican. The Montreal researchers showed that these are distinct psychological phenomena with different causes and consequences.

Interestingly, they found that group identities acquired early in life combine with political ideology to predict positive party identification—you like your party because you grew up in a community that supported it and because its ideology matches your values. But negative party identification operates differently. It emerges through distinct processes and responds to different triggers.

One trigger may be especially potent: negativity bias. Psychologists have long known that negative information produces stronger reactions in the human brain than equivalent positive information. We remember insults longer than compliments. We respond more intensely to threats than opportunities. Evolution shaped us this way—our ancestors who reacted strongly to dangers survived to reproduce, while those who shrugged off threats often didn't.

Political campaigns have learned to exploit this bias. A negative advertisement attacking your opponent generates more engagement than a positive advertisement promoting your own candidate. Fear motivates more than hope. And once negative feelings about the opposition take root, they may prove more durable and influential than positive feelings about your own side.

The Democratic Danger

Cross-national studies have revealed something troubling about negative partisanship: it corrodes faith in democracy itself.

Traditional partisans—people who support their party because they believe in what it stands for—tend to remain committed to democratic institutions even when their side loses. They're disappointed by electoral defeat but accept the legitimacy of the outcome. The system worked; they just need to win more votes next time.

Negative partisans respond differently. When you define yourself primarily by opposition to the enemy, losing an election doesn't feel like a temporary setback. It feels like a catastrophe. The wrong people have taken power—people you believe are fundamentally destructive to everything good about your country.

Research shows that negative partisans express lower satisfaction with democracy and lower confidence in democratic institutions. They're more likely to view election results as illegitimate when their side loses. They're more willing to support anti-democratic measures if those measures prevent the hated opposition from gaining power.

This threatens democratic stability. Democracy depends on losers accepting defeat gracefully and working within the system to win future contests. If losing feels intolerable—if the opposition winning means the nation itself is lost—then the incentive to subvert democratic norms grows stronger.

The January 6th, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol illustrated this danger vividly. Many participants believed, contrary to all evidence, that the 2020 election had been stolen. Their negative partisanship was so intense that they couldn't accept a legitimate loss. Conspiracy theories filled the void where democratic acceptance should have been.

Is There a Way Back?

Understanding negative partisanship doesn't automatically suggest solutions. The forces driving it—ideological sorting, racial realignment, fragmented media, personality factors—aren't easily reversed.

Some researchers advocate for reforms that reduce partisan polarization. Open primaries might elect more moderate candidates. Ranked-choice voting could reward politicians who appeal beyond their base. Media literacy education might help citizens recognize when they're being manipulated by partisan content.

Others are more pessimistic. Once negative partisanship takes hold, it becomes self-reinforcing. You consume media that demonizes the opposition, which intensifies your negative feelings, which drives you toward more extreme media. Your social circles sort by political affiliation, so you rarely encounter thoughtful people who disagree with you. The enemy becomes a caricature rather than a human being.

Perhaps the most important intervention is simply awareness. Understanding that you might be motivated more by hatred than by hope—that your political engagement might be driven primarily by opposition rather than affirmation—creates the possibility of choosing differently.

This doesn't mean abandoning your values or pretending both sides are equally right. It means recognizing that the intensity of your negative feelings might be distorting your judgment. It means questioning whether your media diet is informing you or inflaming you. It means remembering that your political opponents are fellow citizens, not enemies to be destroyed.

Democracy asks something difficult of us: to accept that people who disagree with us profoundly have legitimate roles in governance, that losing elections doesn't mean losing the country, and that persuasion is more sustainable than domination.

Negative partisanship makes those demands nearly impossible to meet. That's precisely why understanding it matters.