Partisan Antipathy and the Erosion of Democratic Norms

Abstract

Does partisan antipathy undermine democracy? Over the past decade, claims of such an effect have pervaded both popular and scholarly discourse—to the point where the link has become widely accepted as an article of faith. But an impressive stream of new studies has raised credible doubts about whether such an effect actually exists. In the present report, even as we replicate the null effects in that nascent literature, we demonstrate that partisan antipathy, when properly conceptualized and operationalized, does indeed predict antidemocratic tendencies. Leveraging cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental methods, including a study conducted during America’s 2022 Midterm Elections, we developed and validated a measure of political sectarianism (a blend of othering, aversion, and moralization toward opposing partisans), which robustly predicted antidemocratic tendencies. In contrast, the influential construct of affective polarization (assessed in terms of cold feelings toward opposing partisans) did not. These findings have important implications for theory and measurement in the social sciences, for understanding democratic erosion, and for applied efforts to bolster American democracy by bridging partisan divides.