Disagreeing or being Disagreeable? Examining the Relative Effects of Elite Incivility and Ideological Polarization on Mass Level Attitudes

Several studies have found that polarization at the elite level makes it more likely that party identifiers will adopt the issue positions of their respective parties. However, the concept of elite polarization is often used with some ambiguity in the literature; some use it to describe increasing levels of incivility, while others use it to refer to ideological polarization. The two dimensions are frequently confounded, and it is thus unclear what leads people to adopt the positions of their preferred party. In this Paper, I address this issue using two experiments embedded in a large, representative survey of the Danish population. Studying two distinct policy issues, experimental participants are presented with a mock news article covering a debate about a new policy proposal. By varying both the level of partisan incivility and the level of ideological polarization, it is possible to see how each of the two dimensions influence the attitudes of party identifiers. The results are important as they can help us understand the causes of mass partisan polarization and partisan sorting.