Journal ArticleDOI
Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions
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This paper examined the impact of long-term partisan loyalties on perceptions of specific political figures and events and concluded that partisan bias in political perceptions plays a crucial role in perpetuating and reinforcing sharp differences in opinion between Democrats and Republicans.Abstract:
I examine the impact of long-term partisan loyalties on perceptions of specific political figures and events. In contrast to the notion of partisanship as a simple “running tally” of political assessments, I show that party identification is a pervasive dynamic force shaping citizens' perceptions of, and reactions to, the political world. My analysis employs panel data to isolate the impact of partisan bias in the context of a Bayesian model of opinion change; I also present more straightforward evidence of contrasts in Democrats' and Republicans' perceptions of “objective” politically relevant events. I conclude that partisan bias in political perceptions plays a crucial role in perpetuating and reinforcing sharp differences in opinion between Democrats and Republicans. This conclusion handsomely validates the emphasis placed by the authors of The American Voter on “the role of enduring partisan commitments in shaping attitudes toward political objects.”read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Hostile Audience: The Effect of Access to Broadband Internet on Partisan Affect
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify the impact of access to broadband Internet on affective polarization by exploiting differences in broadband availability brought about by variation in state right-of-way regulations.
Posted Content
Partisan Bias in Factual Beliefs about Politics
TL;DR: The authors found that small payments for correct and "don't know" responses sharply diminish the gap between Democrats and Republicans in responses to "partisan" factual questions, suggesting that the apparent differences in factual beliefs between members of different parties may be more illusory than real.
Journal ArticleDOI
Partisanship, Political Control, and Economic Assessments
Alan S. Gerber,Gregory A. Huber +1 more
TL;DR: This article found that there are large and statistically significant partisan differences in how economic assessments and behavioral intentions are revised immediately following the Democratic takeover of Congress and concluded that this pattern of partisan response suggests partisan differences on perceptions of the economic competence of the parties, rather than alternative mechanisms.
Journal ArticleDOI
Processing political misinformation: comprehending the Trump phenomenon
TL;DR: Findings suggest that people use political figures as a heuristic to guide evaluation of what is true or false, yet do not necessarily insist on veracity as a prerequisite for supporting political candidates.
References
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Book
An Economic Theory of Democracy
TL;DR: Downs presents a rational calculus of voting that has inspired much of the later work on voting and turnout as discussed by the authors, particularly significant was his conclusion that a rational voter should almost never bother to vote.
Book
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
TL;DR: Zaller as discussed by the authors developed a comprehensive theory to explain how people acquire political information from elites and the mass media and convert it into political preferences, and applied this theory to the dynamics of public opinion on a broad range of subjects, including domestic and foreign policy, trust in government, racial equality, and presidential approval, as well as voting behaviour in U.S. House, Senate and presidential elections.
Journal ArticleDOI
The American Voter
Journal ArticleDOI
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.
TL;DR: The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992) as discussed by the authors is a model of mass opinion formation that offers readers an introduction to the prevailing theory of opinion formation.