Does Europe divide? Affective Dynamics of Polarization in Lithuania

Across Europe and the Western world, there is widespread concern about growing polarization. However, it is rarely clear what exactly lies behind this process. Although party support is often emphasized in affective polarization research, it is neither the only nor necessarily the most important factor driving political hostility. Therefore, I examine a range of political issues alongside party support to determine which ones prevail in Lithuania when evaluated against each other in a conjoint experiment conducted in autumn 2025, e.g. views on the Soviet times, attitudes toward the legalisation of same-sex marriage, mandatory COVID-19 vaccination, military support for Ukraine and support for the European integration. In this paper, I specifically ask to what extent European integration plays a role in the polarization in Lithuania. I also investigate whether this relation is stronger for supporters of Eurosceptic populist parties considering that these parties put more importance on the European issues than others. I also believe that people who think that they cannot freely express their political opinions in public are opposed to and develop more hostility around progressive political agenda, i.e. same-sex marriage, and strongly dominant political positions, such as support for Ukraine or European integration. Empirical results show contrary trends: These are the more progressive (concervative and liberal) voters whom EU has a higher salience. And, not the people who think their opinion is publically supressed are more politically hostile and polarized, but again, the more progressive voters who do think that they could freely express their opinion. It is due to the strength and consistency of the attitudes of conservative and liberal voters in Lithuania in contrast to populist and perceived supressed voters. Experiment is pre-registered: https://osf.io/yrvqn.