Why negative partisanship is flipping politics on its head
Why ‘negative partisanship’ is flipping politics on its head
Harry Zahn
PBS News Hour
There were the “Lock her up!” chants that rang through Donald Trump’s campaign rallies, encouraged by the President-elect himself. There was Hillary Clinton’s famous “basket of deplorables” comment and her warning to a reporter: “I’m the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse.” The mudslinging from both sides reached new lows in an election pitting the two most unpopular presidential candidates in modern history.
Increasingly, Democratic and Republican voters are motivated by negative feelings toward the other party and its candidates, according to political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster, authors of the 2015 study, “The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. elections in the 21st century.”
These changes help explain why, in the end, so many anti-Trump Republicans supported a highly unusual and controversial candidate who held stances on issues like infrastructure and trade that are not aligned with modern Republican orthodoxy. On the other side, many liberal Bernie Sanders supporters who backed Clinton in the general election were more motivated by a desire to stop Trump than by enthusiasm for the party’s nominee.