Publication Date
12-1-2025
Description
American political rhetoric at both the mass and elite levels has become more polarized, and citizens have become more likely to view the “other side” of the political spectrum as not just wrong on the issues, but also as dangerous, morally deficient people (see, e.g., Mason 2020; Druckman and Levy 2022). This project draws from the literature on political polarization to understand, in an open-ended way, the kinds of things that people have in mind when they talk about the political parties. Through a series of open-ended question, we ask respondents to list things that they like about the political parties. Our preliminary results, some of which are presented here, suggests that partisans’ views of political parties are generally negative, not particularly ideologically sophisticated, and motivated by perceived threats from the other side. They are also few differences across demographic lines (though more educated people tend to be more sophisticated in talking about politics and in their perceptions of threat coming from the other side). They are also symmetric across party lines (see Arceneaux et al. 2025); despite their other differences, Democrats and Republicans tend to talk about politics in similar ways, using similar kinds of language.
Type
Report