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Clarke Dissertation 7-11-22.pdf (4.42 MB)

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The effect of partisan competition on affective polarization, tolerance of election cheating, & political engagement

Clarke, Erik
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6381-0260
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1657537619143204

Abstract Details

2022, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Political Science.
Elections, and the winner-take-all competition between partisan group it represents, is often captured by common metaphors about politics being similar to a sports competition. In a three article dissertation, I examine how a focus on closeness of political partisan competition affects people's people degree of affective polarization, their tolerance of election cheating, and how it does not affect political engagement. Article 1: In recent political history, most elections have become increasingly non-competitive. Yet even though most elections are non-competitive, the Americans have become increasingly polarized and have even grown to hate or loath their opposing partisan group. If there is so little struggle over partisan control of the U.S. government, then why are Americans so entrenched against their partisan out-group? Using a survey of Americans' perceptions of election competitiveness, I explore what drives people's perceptions of competition and how it influences attitudes. I find people are biased towards perceiving elections as competitive and partisans are bias in vote-share perceptions. Greater perceptions of national partisan competition, but not other levels of office, is a predictor of higher levels of affective polarization. Real levels of partisan competition also affect people's level of affective polarization but in more nuanced ways. Given these findings, I discuss insight on effective methods for reducing partisan competition and thus affective polarization. Article 2: American government supports that highly competitive practices like elections are the best way to represent the will of voters. However, in an era of high partisan animus, it is worth examining the negative effects that this focus has on people's attitudes. Using an original survey experiment, I investigate the effects of salient partisan competition on people's tolerance of election cheating. I find that greater salience of partisan competition increases participants' tolerance of election cheating when their their in-party stands to benefit and decreases participants' tolerance of election cheating when their their out-party stands to benefit. Surprisingly given these findings, I do not find that salience of partisan competition affects people's endorsement of political values of fairness. I discuss these findings in the context of democratic government and the connection to modern partisan animus. Article 3: Existing research about political networks establishes a strong relationship between cross-pressure and political participation though ambivalence as a mediator. I hypothesized the salience of partisan competition is an unstudied mediator in established findings. I examine how well previous findings are replicated in an experimental setting as well as examined the potential for salient partisan competition to be another mediator affecting political participation. With this new method, I found some support for established findings but found no evidence for the role of silent partisan competition as a mediating variable. As I successfully manipulated cross-cutting exposure with a novel treatment, this is evidence that political network diversity can have a heterogeneous effect based on salience rather than only having a homogeneous effect based on network composition/diversity. This has important implications for the methodology of political network research as well as for the era of social media and other digital spaces where politics are discussed.
Thomas Nelson (Committee Chair)
Gregory Calderia (Committee Member)
Thomas Wood (Committee Member)
Thomas Nelson (Advisor)
226 p.
Behavioral Sciences; Political Science; Psychology
partisan competition; political competition; political psychology; polarization; experiments; surveys; election perceptions; affective polarization; social polarization; political knowledge; vanishing marginals; election cheating; democratic values; cross-pressure; cross-cutting exposure; ambivalence

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Clarke, E. (2022). The effect of partisan competition on affective polarization, tolerance of election cheating, & political engagement [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1657537619143204

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Clarke, Erik. The effect of partisan competition on affective polarization, tolerance of election cheating, & political engagement. 2022. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1657537619143204.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Clarke, Erik. "The effect of partisan competition on affective polarization, tolerance of election cheating, & political engagement." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1657537619143204

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1657537619143204
381
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.