NEST Distinguished Speaker Series

Title: Partisan Hostility in America: When It Matters and When It Doesn't

Speaker: Samara Klar 

Professor Klar is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona. She primarily uses surveys and experiments to investigate how personal identities and social settings influence political atytitudes and behaviors.

Growing hostility between Democrats and Republicans is of great concern to scholars and citizens alike. Political scientists have very little understanding, though, of when, why, or how this partisan hostility influences opinions and policies themselves.

With a panel dataset spanning over two years- throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and Biden's election to the presidency- we investigate the conditions under which partisan hostility affects policy views. We find that when politicians policize an  issue, Americans who are affectively polarized follow cues and express extreme views. But when issues are not explicitly politicized by elites, even the most bipartisan agreement prevails among even the most polarized citizen. This work provides a detailed understanding of how effective polarization shapes opinions.