Election Outcomes and Affective Polarization in the United States
Open accessAbstract
Do election outcomes exacerbate affective polarization? While polarization often rises during campaigns and correlates with democratic backsliding, isolating the effect of winning or losing has proven difficult because of the need for a pre-election baseline and to generalize across multiple elections. In this study, we leverage pre- and post-election questions about partisan affect in the American National Election Study between 1996 and 2024. Our first analysis studies how respondents’ attitudes changed based on their party’s success in its bid for the White House. Our second analysis extends this to hundreds more races, applying a regression discontinuity design to attitudes after close subnational election results. Both analyses support the conclusion that the losing side drives the post-election gap in polarization, and that they do so by feeling less warmly toward their own party. In the United States, political loss may erode in-group attachment more than it fuels out-group hostility.
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The result somewhat aligns with Phillips and Warner's (2026) finding that members of the losing party after an election feel less warmth toward their own party.
“The result somewhat aligns with Phillips and Warner's (2026) finding that members of the losing party after an election feel less warmth toward their own party.”
From Measuring affective polarization: Matching concepts to measures (2026) · cites this paper as Phillips and Warner's (2026)
Cites
Iyengar, S., Sood, G., & Lelkes, Y. (2012) · Public Opinion Quarterly · doi:10.1093/poq/nfs038 · Cited by 2,748 · see citing works
Intergroup Threat and Outgroup Attitudes: A Meta-Analytic Review
Riek, B. M., Mania, E. W., & Gaertner, S. L. (2006) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr1004_4 · Cited by 1,588 · see citing works
Methods Matter: p-Hacking and Publication Bias in Causal Analysis in Economics
Brodeur, A., Cook, N., & Heyes, A. (2020) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.20190687 · Cited by 333 · see citing works
Affective Polarization in Comparative and Longitudinal Perspective
Garzia, D., Ferreira da Silva, F., & Maye, S. (2023) · Public Opinion Quarterly · doi:10.1093/poq/nfad004 · Cited by 137 · cited 2× · see citing works
“Garzia et al. (2023) show that trends in polarization have varied widely across countries over the last 30 years, and polarization itself can be operationalized differently depending on the structure of a country ’ s partisan politics (Tichelbaecker et al. 2023).”
Differentiating the sources of post‐election partisan affect warming
Gidron, N., & Sheffer, L. (2024) · European Journal of Political Research · doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12641 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
Winners, losers, and affective polarization
Andrews, J., & Huang, Y.-S. (2025) · Party Politics · doi:10.1177/13540688241292556 · Cited by 11 · cited 5× · see citing works
“…expands this to the political realm, noting that supporters of Barack Obama kept their yard signs up for longer than John McCain supporters did after the 2008 election, and Andrews and Huang (2024) show in cross-national contexts that winners exhibit more in-party love than does the losing side.”
InfluentialHamrak, B. (2025) · Electoral Studies · doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102967 · Cited by 5 · cited 3× · see citing works
“But this masks variation in post-election patterns across countries (e.g., Gidron and Sheffer 2024; Sheffer 2020), as well as the fact that American voters display this tendency particularly strongly (Andrews and Huang, 2024; Hamrak, 2025).”
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Measuring affective polarization: Matching concepts to measures
Druckman, J. N., Klar, S., Krupnikov, Y., Levendusky, M., & Ryan, J. B. (2026) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.70152 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Partisan Wishful Thinking in Polarized Times
Warner, S. B. (2026) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-026-10214-y
Self-citationKim, B., Lin, H., Lee, Y.-S., & Lee, J. (2026) · Media International Australia · doi:10.1177/1329878x261494415
Madison, S. B., Jane, N. I., & Aljeaidi, M. A. A. (2026) · Al-Biruni Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences · doi:10.64440/biruni/bir0037
Election salience revisited: How elections (do not) boost affective polarization
Eck, B., & Michel, E. (2026) · Electoral Studies · doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2026.103116
- Authors
- Phillips, J. B., & Warner, S. B.
- Affiliations
- Cardiff University (GB)
- University of Connecticut (US)
- Corresponding author
- Phillips, Joseph B.
- Venue
- Political Research Quarterly
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2026-01-02
- Volume
- 79
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 399-409
- ISSN
- 1065-9129 (ISSN-L)
- 1938-274X
- OpenAlex
- W7118013582
- Cited by
- 5
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5
- FWCI
- 98.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Political Research Quarterly (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (submittedVersion)
- 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
- affective polarization, election results, partisan affect, party identification, outgroup hostility, presidential elections, subnational elections, regression discontinuity design, American National Election Studies
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