Party Cues in the News: Democratic Elites, Republican Backlash, and the Dynamics of Climate Skepticism
Open accessAbstract
Supporters of the Republican Party have become much more skeptical of the science of climate change since the 1990s. We argue that backlash to out-group cues from Democratic elites played an important role in this process. We construct aggregate measures of climate skepticism from nearly 200 public opinion polls at the quarterly level from 2001 to 2014 and at the annual level from 1986 to 2014. We also build time series measures of possible contributors to climate skepticism using an automated media content analysis. Our analyses provide evidence that cues from party elites – especially from Democrats – are associated with aggregate dynamics in climate change skepticism including among supporters of the Republican Party. We then conduct a party cue survey experiment on a sample of 3,000 Americans through Amazon Mechanical Turk to provide more evidence of causality. Together, these results draw attention to the importance of out-group cue-taking and suggest we should see climate change skepticism through the lens of elite-led opinion formation.
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Processes such as self-categorization, in-group favouritism and out-group derogation contribute to political polarization by encouraging partisans to engage in various forms of motivated reasoning on behalf of their political party or ideological group.
“Processes such as self-categorization, in-group favouritism and out-group derogation contribute to political polarization by encouraging partisans to engage in various forms of motivated reasoning — including selective information exposure or avoidance and confirmation or disconfirmation biases — on behalf of their political party or ideological group3,39,91,94,141–144.”
From Cognitive–motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts (2022) · cites this paper as [144]
Archival research reveals that mainstream media coverage of Democratic elites' support for climate action stimulated resistance and even backlash (decreased support) among Republican voters.
“Archival research reveals that mainstream media coverage of Democratic elites’ support for climate action stimulated resistance and even backlash (decreased support) among Republican voters144.”
From Cognitive–motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts (2022) · cites this paper as [144]
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“A sizable literature in opinion formation tells us that elites often have an important influence on public attitudes (Lenz 2012; Zaller 1992), but policy makers are often responsive to public opinion for the purposes of securing re-election (Erikson, Mackuen and Stimson 2002).”
BackgroundText as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts
Grimmer, J., & Stewart, B. M. (2013) · Political Analysis · doi:10.1093/pan/mps028 · Cited by 3,297 · cited 3× · see citing works
“This work joins an emerging literature on the role of the media and elite cues in climate change polarization (Carmichael and Brulle 2017; Guber 2013; Merkley and Stecula 2018; Tesler 2018) and work showing the persuasive influence of out-group party cues (Berinsky 2009; Bischof and Wagner 2019;…”
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Affective polarization, local contexts and public opinion in America
Druckman, J. N., Klar, S., Krupnikov, Y., Levendusky, M., & Ryan, J. B. (2020) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-020-01012-5 · Cited by 463 · see citing works
Cognitive–motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts
Jost, J. T., Baldassarri, D. S., & Druckman, J. N. (2022) · Nature Reviews Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44159-022-00093-5 · Cited by 276 · see citing works
- Authors
- Merkley, E., & Stecula, D. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Colorado State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Merkley, Eric
- Venue
- British Journal of Political Science
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2020-07-08
- Volume
- 51
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1439-1456
- ISSN
- 0007-1234 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-2112
- OpenAlex
- W3001418019
- Cited by
- 135
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 10
- FWCI
- 21.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- public-domain
- www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified)
- Locations
- British Journal of Political Science (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, public-domain)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Keywords
- climate change skepticism, party cues, democratic elites, Republican Party, news framing, climate science, public opinion dynamics
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