CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 356Electoral Systems and Political ParticipationMedia Influence and PoliticsSocial and Intergroup Psychology

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 25 of the 25 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

(Mis)perceptions of Partisan Polarization in the American Public

Open access
Levendusky, Matthew S., Malhotra, Neil·2016·Public Opinion Quarterly
DOI 10.1093/poq/nfv045
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Few topics in public opinion research have attracted as much attention in recent years as partisan polarization in the American mass public. Yet, there has been considerably less investigation into whether people perceive the electorate to be polarized and the patterns of these perceptions. Building on work in social psychology, we argue that Americans perceive more polarization with respect to policy issues than actually exists, a phenomenon known as false polarization. Data from a nationally representative probability sample and a novel estimation strategy to make inferences about false polarization show that people significantly misperceive the public to be more divided along partisan lines than it is in reality. Also, people’s misperceptions of opposing partisans are larger than those about their own party. We discuss the implications of these empirical patterns for American electoral politics.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/poq/nfv045

Cites

25 of 25 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 25 references

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. 10.2307/448017 · DOI
  2. Fiorina Morris Matthew Levendusky . 2006. “Disconnected: The Political Class versus the People.” In Red and Blue Nation? Characteristics, Causes, and Consequences of America’s Polarized Politics, edited by David Brady and Pietro Nivola , 49–71. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press and the Hoover Institution Press.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 301–356 of 356

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Levendusky, M. S., & Malhotra, N.
Affiliations
University of Pennsylvania (US)
Corresponding author
Levendusky, Matthew S.
ORCID
Venue
Public Opinion Quarterly
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2015-10-29
Volume
80
Issue
S1
Pages
378-391
ISSN
  • 0033-362X (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5331
DOI
10.1093/poq/nfv045
OpenAlex
W2256445737
Cited by
356
References
25
Citations by year
2026: 31 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 44 · 2023: 41 · 2022: 49 · 2021: 69 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 25 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 1
FWCI
73.71
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Public Opinion Quarterly (publishedVersion)
  • HighWire Press Open Archive (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Science Foundation (0818839)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
Keywords
partisan polarization, American public opinion, electoral politics

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review