Differentiating the sources of post‐election partisan affect warming
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Abstract While scholars have closely examined the intensification of negative affect across party lines during elections, less is known about the decline of partisan hostility in the aftermath of election campaigns. Synthesizing insights from research on electoral rules and political psychology, we theorize and empirically test two such mechanisms of post‐election negative affect decline. The first is that of winners' generosity: the expectation that self‐perceived election winners will express warmer feelings towards political opponents. The second is that of co‐governance, which predicts that shared coalition status leads to warmer affective evaluations among governing parties. We provide evidence that these mechanisms operate as pressure valves of negative partisan affect. We also show that while co‐governance reduces negative affect between parties who govern together, it fuels negative affect among supporters of opposition parties. The empirical analyses leverage a uniquely uncertain political period following the 2021 Israeli elections, around which we conducted an original panel study. Our findings advance the comparative polarization literature and connect psychological and institutional accounts of temporal fluctuations in partisan affect.
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While there is some work on how electoral outcomes impact affective polarization, it does not explicitly or fully interrogate the role of power.
“While there is some work on how electoral outcomes impact affective polarization (e.g., Andrews & Huang, 2025;Gidron & Sheffer, 2024;Hamrak, 2025;Phillips & Warner, 2026), it does not explicitly or fully interrogate the role of power.”
From Measuring affective polarization: Matching concepts to measures (2026) · cites this paper as Gidron & Sheffer, 2024
The Theoretical expectations section confirms that the paper studies how electoral outcomes affect partisan feelings. Contrary to the claim that this work does not explicitly interrogate power, the paper identifies power sharing through co-governing as a distinct pathway, and its Results: Co-governance section tests how governing status relates to changes in partisan affect. Our copy does not establish whether it addresses every broader meaning of power. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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- Authors
- Gidron, N., & Sheffer, L.
- Affiliations
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IL)
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- Corresponding author
- Gidron, Noam
- Venue
- European Journal of Political Research
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2024-08
- Volume
- 63
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 1155-1174
- ISSN
- 0304-4130 (ISSN-L)
- 1475-6765
- OpenAlex
- W4389207629
- Cited by
- 14
- References
- 58
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1
- FWCI
- 13.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- European Journal of Political Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Israel Science Foundation (1806/19)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Populism, Right-Wing Movements
- Keywords
- partisan affect, co-governance, coalition government, political polarization, electoral rules
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