Affective Polarization or Ideological Disagreeement? Feelings Toward Radical Parties in Belgium.

While the concept of 'affective polarization' has been used abundantly in two-party systems, there is more disagreement in the literature about its volatility in multi-party systems. Empirical research does not offer a clear conclusion on whether affective polarization actually is present in such party systems. To the extent that radical political parties (both to the right as to the left of the political spectrum) gain electoral appeal, it might be expected that there is indeed more ground for ideological disagreement in these systems, too. In this paper we investigate to what extent the concept of 'affective polarization' is actually meaningful in a multiparty political system. Based on the results of the CSES-2024 electoral survey in Belgium, we try to explain the feelings of respondents toward voters for other parties. The analysis shows that these feelings are only negative toward voters for the radical parties. Furthermore, results show that the ideological distance toward these radical parties, fully explains the negative feelings toward these voters. As such, our conclusion has to be that the concept of 'affective polarization' does not have any added value in a multi-party system like Belgium.