Mass attitudes and polarization over an electoral year

Mass attitudes towards groups of other citizens in various ways underpin the character of nationhood, the quality of democracy, and influence citizen participation. They may also be affected by citizen participation, for example in protests and elections. In this study, we focus on one Latin American country - Brazil - and track mass values and attitudes among different groups during the 2022 electoral year and into 2023. First, over four, nationally representative survey rounds (N=3000 for each), we follow the changing salience of different kinds of identity (race, gender e.t.c) relative to one another, and the changing salience of different political identities (partisan, anti-partisan, leader-centric and anti-leader) relative to each other. As well as other kinds of attitudes towards the October 2022 elections, and the post-election protests and storming of various government buildings in the capital on 8th January 2023. We present associations between these and policy polarization, affective polarization and meta-polarization in the country. Second, we draw on experimental techniques to test some possible influences on these different forms of polarization, and examine the effect of different treatments on anti-democratic attitudes. In one or our treatments, a randomised survey item, we present true but surprising information about the proximity of policy opinions of the most salient political in-groups and out-groups (Lulistas and Bolsonaristas) from a previous survey round. Here, we anticipated a shift in policy and affective polarization, but not in meta-polarization, since respondents perceive others to be unaware of the surprising information. Our treatments explore whether these forms of polarization move in relation to one another, and associations with changes in attitudes towards elections, protest and democratic values. Third, we explore how different forms of polarization are associated with recent interactions with the public sector workers and officials (and accounts of the degree of political sentiment in the content of those interactions). And fourth, we provide descriptive information about citizens' perceptions of the intensity of feelings between those with different political opinions throughout the period of the study, and their perceptions of the activities in everyday life that heighten or placate this intensity. This work has been pre-registered.