Hostname: page-component-5447f9dfdb-bxsvz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-30T05:02:13.265Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Divided by the Vote: Affective Polarization in the Wake of the Brexit Referendum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2020

Sara B. Hobolt Open the ORCID record for Sara B. Hobolt [Opens in a new window] ,
Thomas J. Leeper Open the ORCID record for Thomas J. Leeper [Opens in a new window]  and
James Tilley Open the ORCID record for James Tilley [Opens in a new window]
Sara B. Hobolt*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Thomas J. Leeper
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
James Tilley
Affiliation:
University of Oxford, UK
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: s.b.hobolt@lse.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A well-functioning democracy requires a degree of mutual respect and a willingness to talk across political divides. Yet numerous studies have shown that many electorates are polarized along partisan lines, with animosity towards the partisan out-group. This article further develops the idea of affective polarization, not by partisanship, but instead by identification with opinion-based groups. Examining social identities formed during Britain's 2016 referendum on European Union membership, the study uses surveys and experiments to measure the intensity of partisan and Brexit-related affective polarization. The results show that Brexit identities are prevalent, felt to be personally important and cut across traditional party lines. These identities generate affective polarization as intense as that of partisanship in terms of stereotyping, prejudice and various evaluative biases, convincingly demonstrating that affective polarization can emerge from identities beyond partisanship.

Keywords

affective polarizationpartisanshipgroup identityBrexitbiasreferendum

Information

Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 1476 - 1493
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Achen, CH and Bartels, LM (2016) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections do not Produce Responsive Governments. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, CJ, et al. (2005) Losers’ Consent: Elections and Democratic Legitimacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auspurg, K and Hinz, T (2014) Factorial Survey Experiments. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Bansak, K, Hainmueller, J and Hangartner, D (2016) How economic, humanitarian, and religious concerns shape European attitudes toward asylum seekers. Science 354(6309), 217–222.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bartels, LM (2002) Beyond the running tally: partisan bias in political perceptions. Political Behavior 24(2), 117–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartle, J and Belluci, P (2009) Partisanship, social identity and individual attitudes. In Bartle, J and Belluci, P (eds), Political Parties and Partisanship: Social Identity and Individual Attitudes. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–25.Google Scholar
Becker, SO, Fetzer, T and Novy, D (2017) Who voted for Brexit? A comprehensive district-level analysis. Economic Policy 32(92), 601–650.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bisgaard, M (2015) Bias will find a way: economic perceptions, attributions of blame, and partisan-motivated reasoning during crisis. Journal of Politics 77(3), 849–860.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bliuc, A-M et al. (2007) Opinion-based group membership as a predictor of commitment to political action. European Journal of Social Psychology 37(1), 19–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carmines, EG and Stimson, JA (1981) Issue evolution, population replacement, and normal partisan change. American Political Science Review 75(1), 107–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, HD, Goodwin, M and Whiteley, P (2017) Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colantone, I and Stanig, P (2018) Global competition and Brexit. American Political Science Review 112(2), 201–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Converse, P (1964) The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In Apter, D (ed.), Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press, pp. 206–261.Google Scholar
Criado, H et al. (2018) The unintended consequences of political mobilization on trust: the case of the secessionist process in Catalonia. Journal of Conflict Resolution 62(2), 231–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curtice, J (2017a) Why leave won the UK's EU referendum. Journal of Common Market Studies 55(S1), 19–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curtice, J (2017b) General election 2017: a new two-party politics? Political Insight 8(2), 4–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cutts, D et al. (2020) Brexit, the 2019 general election and the realignment of British politics. Political Quarterly (forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, RA (1967) Pluralist Democracy in the United States: Conflict and Consent. New York: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
De Boef, S and Kellstedt, PM (2004) The political (and economic) origins of consumer confidence. American Journal of Political Science 48, 633–649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryzek, JS and Niemeyer, S (2006) Reconciling pluralism and consensus as political ideals. American Journal of Political Science 50(3), 634–649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Electoral Commission (2015) Referendum on membership of the European Union: Assessment of the Electoral Commission on the proposed referendum question.Google Scholar
Enns, PK, Kellstedt, PM and McAvoy, GE (2012) The consequences of partisanship in economic perceptions. Public Opinion Quarterly 76(2), 287–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G and Menon, A (2017) Brexit and British Politics. London: Polity.Google Scholar
Evans, G and Pickup, M (2010) Reversing the causal arrow: the political conditioning of economic perceptions in the 2000–2004 U.S. presidential cycle. Journal of Politics 72(4), 1236–1251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G and Tilley, J (2017) The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fieldhouse, E et al. (2019) British Election Study 2014–2024 Combined Waves 1–15 Internet Panel.Google Scholar
Fiorina, MP and Abrams, SJ (2008) Political polarization in the American public. Annual Review of Political Science 11, 563–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallego, A and Marx, P (2017) Multi-dimensional preferences for labour market reforms: a conjoint experiment. Journal of European Public Policy 24(7), 1027–1047.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garry, J, Marsh, M and Sinnott, R (2005) “Second-order” versus “issue-voting” effects in EU referendums: evidence from the Irish Nice treaty referendums. European Union Politics 6(2), 201–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, MJ and Heath, O (2016) The 2016 referendum, Brexit and the left behind: an aggregate-level analysis of the result. Political Quarterly 87(3), 323–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, DP, Palmquist, B and Schickler, E (2004) Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Greene, S (2000) The psychological sources of partisan-leaning independence. American Politics Quarterly 28(4), 511–537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hainmueller, J and Hopkins, DJ (2015) The hidden American immigration consensus: a conjoint analysis of attitudes toward immigrants. American Journal of Political Science 59, 529–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hainmueller, J, Hopkins, DJ and Yamamoto, T (2014) Causal inference in conjoint analysis: understanding multidimensional choices via stated preference experiments. Political Analysis 22(1), 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, O and Goodwin, M (2017) The 2017 general election, Brexit and the return to two-party politics: an aggregate-level analysis of the result. Political Quarterly 88(3), 345–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hetherington, MJ (2009) Putting polarization in perspective. British Journal of Political Science 39(2), 413–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hierro, MJ and Gallego, A (2018) Identities in between: political conflict and ethnonational identities in multicultural states. Journal of Conflict Resolution 62(6), 1314–1339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobolt, SB, Leeper, TJ and Tilley, J (2020) Replication Data for: Divided by the Vote: Affective Polarization in the Wake of the Brexit Referendum. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/35M5CV, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:IHBClTpTg9hrehAjmdVYdg== [fileUNF]Google Scholar
Hobolt, SB (2009) Europe in Question. Referendums on European Integration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobolt, SB (2016) The Brexit vote: a divided nation, a divided continent. Journal of European Public Policy 23(9), 1259–1277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobolt, SB (2018) Brexit and the 2017 UK general election. Journal of Common Market Studies 56, 39–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobolt, SB and Rodon, T (2020) Cross-cutting issues and electoral choice. EU issue voting in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. Journal of European Public Policy 27(2), 227–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horowitz, DL (1993) Democracy in divided societies. Journal of Democracy 4(4), 18–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooghe, L and Marks, G (2018) Cleavage theory meets Europe's crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the transnational cleavage. Journal of European Public Policy 25(1), 109–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huddy, L (2001) From social to political identity: a critical examination of social identity theory. Political Psychology 22(1), 127–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huddy, L, Mason, L and Aarøe, L (2015) Expressive partisanship: campaign involvement, political emotion, and partisan identity. American Political Science Review 109(1), 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ipsos-Mori (2018) Issues Index: 2007 onwards. Available from https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/issues-index-2007-onwards (accessed 4 June 2018).Google Scholar
Iyengar, S et al. (2019) The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science 22, 129–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S, Sood, G and Lelkes, Y (2012) Affect, not ideology: a social identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly 76(3), 405–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S and Westwood, SJ (2015) Fear and loathing across party lines: new evidence on group polarization. American Journal of Political Science 59(3), 690–707.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jasso, G (2006) Factorial survey methods for studying beliefs and judgements. Sociological Methods & Research 34(3), 334–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, W and Stoker, G (2017) Tilting towards the cosmopolitan axis? Political change in England and the 2017 general election. Political Quarterly 88(3), 359–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, R et al. (2018) Geographies of Brexit and its aftermath: voting in England at the 2016 referendum and the 2017 general election. Space and Polity 22(2), 162–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinder, DR and Kalmoe, NP (2017) Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Klar, S (2014) Partisanship in a social setting. American Journal of Political Science 58(3), 687–704.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kriesi, H et al. (2006) Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: six European countries compared. European Journal of Political Research 45(6), 921–956.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kriesi, H et al. (2008) West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krosnick, JC (1990) Government policy and citizen passion: a study of issue publics in contemporary America. Political Behavior 12(1), 59–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lacombe, MJ (2019) The political weaponization of gun owners: the National Rifle Association's cultivation, dissemination, and use of a group social identity. The Journal of Politics 81(4), 1342–1356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Layman, GC, Carsey, TM and Horowitz, JM (2006) Party polarization in American politics: characteristics, causes, and consequences. Annual Political Science Review 9, 83–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leeper, T, Hobolt, S and Tilley, J (2020) Measuring subgroup preferences in conjoint experiments. Political Analysis 28(2), 207–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lelkes, Y and Westwood, SJ (2017) The limits of partisan prejudice. Journal of Politics 79(2), 485–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levendusky, M and Malhotra, N (2016) Does media coverage of partisan polarization affect political attitudes? Political Communication 33(2), 283–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levendusky, MS (2013) Why do partisan media polarize viewers? American Journal of Political Science 57(3), 611–623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipset, SM (1959) Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
MacKuen, M et al. (2010) Civic engagements: resolute partisanship or reflective deliberation. American Journal of Political Science 54(2), 440–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malka, A and Lelkes, Y (2010) More than ideology: conservative–liberal identity and receptivity to political cues. Social Justice Research 23(2–3), 156–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, L (2013) The rise of uncivil agreement: issue versus behavioral polarization in the American electorate. American Behavioral Scientist 57(1), 140–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, L (2015) ‘I disrespectfully agree’: the differential effects of partisan sorting on social and issue polarization. American Journal of Political Science 59(1), 128–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, L (2018) Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGarty, C et al. (2009) Collective action as the material expression of opinion-based group membership. Journal of Social Issues 65(4), 839–857.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, PR and Conover, PJ (2015) Red and blue states of mind: partisan hostility and voting in the United States. Political Research Quarterly 68(2), 225–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mouffe, C (1999) Deliberative democracy or agonistic pluralism? Social Research 66(3), 745–748.Google Scholar
NatCen (2007). British Social Attitudes Survey 2005. London: National Centre for Social Research.Google Scholar
Oller i Sala, MJ, Satorra, A and Tobeña, A (2019) Secessionists vs. Unionists in Catalonia: mood, emotional profiles and beliefs about secession perspectives in two confronted communities. Psychology 10(3), 336–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prosser, C (2016) Calling European Union treaty referendums: electoral and institutional politics. Political Studies 64(1), 182–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prosser, C (2018) The strange death of multi-party Britain: the UK general election of 2017. West European Politics 41(5), 1226–1236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabushka, A and Shepsle, KA (1972) Politics in Plural Societies. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, L and Heath, A (2017) CSI Brexit 1: How much are people willing to pay for the Brexit divorce bill? Oxford University: Centre for Social Investigation.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, E (1960) The Semi-Sovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Smith, LGE, Thomas, EF and McGarty, C (2015) ‘We must be the change we want to see in the world’: integrating norms and identities through social interaction. Political Psychology 36(5), 543–557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanley, HW (1988) Southern partisan changes: dealignment, realignment or both? Journal of Politics 50(1), 64–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tajfel, H (1970) Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Scientific American 223(5), 96–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tajfel, H (1979) Individuals and groups in social psychology. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 18(2), 183–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tajfel, H (1982) Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology 33(1), 1–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tajfel, H and Turner, JC (1979) An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In Austin, WG and Stephen, W (eds), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, pp. 33–47.Google Scholar
Thompson, D and Gutmann, A (1996) Democracy and Disagreement. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tilley, J and Evans, G (2017) The new politics of class after the 2017 general election. Political Quarterly 88(4), 710–715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tilley, J and Hobolt, SB (2011) Is the government to blame? An experimental test of how partisanship shapes perceptions of performance and responsibility. Journal of Politics 73(2), 316–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, JC (1982) Towards a cognitive redefinition of the social group. In Tajfel, H (ed.), Social Identity and Intergroup Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–40.Google Scholar
Valentino, NA et al. (2008) Is a worried citizen a good citizen? Emotions, political information seeking, and learning via the internet. Political Psychology 29(2), 247–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valentino, NA and Sears, DO (2005) Old times there are not forgotten: race and partisan realignment in the contemporary South. American Journal of Political Science 49(3), 672–688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westwood, SJ et al. (2018) The tie that divides: cross-national evidence of the primacy of partyism. European Journal of Political Research 57(2), 333–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wlezien, C, Franklin, M and Twiggs, D (1997) Economic perceptions and vote choice: disentangling the endogeneity. Political Behavior 19(1), 7–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Hobolt et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/35M5CV
Link
Supplementary material: File

Hobolt et al. supplementary material

Hobolt et al. supplementary material

Download Hobolt et al. supplementary material(File)
File 309 KB