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Does Intra-Party Disagreement Reduce Affective Polarization?

Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Affective polarization and negative partisanship, defined as hostile attitudes toward the opposing party, is a prominent issue that has detrimental consequences in polarized U.S. politics (Iyengar et al., 2019). Of many determinants, some studies have attributed such mass polarization to elite polarization (Hetherington, 2001; Zingher and Flynn, 2018), exemplified by the increased ideological distance between the two parties and the decline in bipartisanship (McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, 2006; Lee, 2018). Studies on party cues have also found that voters use party labels and elite messages as cognitive shortcuts to shape their attitudes and preferences (Kam, 2005; Nicholson, 2012). These findings highlight the important role of political parties in shaping public opinion. At the same time, intra-party disagreement has been one of the notable phenomena in the current U.S. political landscape, especially within the Republican Party. As intra-party disagreement sends different signals from the same party, these two opposite situations naturally lead to several research subsections. If elite polarization and the increase in party cohesion lead to mass polarization, does observing intra-party disagreement reduce affective polarization? How strong and what type of intra-party disagreement is needed to attenuate affective polarization? Answering these subsections is crucial to understanding the causes of affective polarization. We can deduce two contradicting views on the impact of intra-party disagreement from the literature. On the one hand, we can expect that observing intra-party disagreement in which challengers accuse an extreme leader mitigates affective polarization among in-party and out-party supporters. For in-party supporters, intra-party disagreement can send a signal that the in-party is not cohesive or unified. Intra-party disagreement then reduces the evaluation of competence and reliability of the party and dilutes the party brand, which can consequently mitigate party identification strength and thus affective polarization. For out-party supporters, intra-party disagreement within the out-party implies that the party is heterogeneous and moderate, and less threatening for elections and future policy outcomes. As electoral competition increases the salience of ”us” versus ”them” divide (Bassan-Nygate and Weiss, 2022), a decreased level of out-party threat in elections can reduce affective polarization. Intra-party disagreement within the out-party also suggests that policy outputs from the out-party in the future will be more moderate and thus expect the outcomes not to be quite terrible. On the other hand, especially in the U.S. context, studies have found a strong influence of party leaders on public opinion. They highlight that polarized partisans do not punish party leaders even when challenged by in-party elites, and leader cues shape policy preferences (Agadjanian, 2021; Filindra and Harbridge Yong, 2022). If party leader influences are significantly strong, it is also possible that any type or extent of intra-party disagreement does not mitigate affective polarization, as partisans hold negative attitudes toward the out-party solely because of out-party leaders. To test these expectations, I utilize the second impeachment vote of Donald Trump and design a framing experiment, randomly assigning information about how unified the Republican Party is, to investigate whether framing the second impeachment vote as a significant intra-party disagreement within the Republican Party decreases affective polarization. I also test the path of perceived ideological moderation by analyzing ideological placement of political parties. The experiment adds a new piece of evidence about the impact of intra-party disagreement on public opinion and provides a clue to remedies for affective polarization.
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7152332837
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