Loathe You Too: Abortion Salience, Partisan Affect, and Aggressive Politics

Abstract

This research seeks to determine the causal linkage between affective polarization and the degree to which abortion is important to voters. Using quantitative data from the American National Election Studies and a combination of case studies and regression analyses, it finds that the degree to which voters think of abortion as an important issue does generate an increase in affective polarization, and that this relationship also exists for other social issues. Moreover, it finds that abortion salience has increased affective polarization specifically when politicians have engaged in both affective polarization and policy polarization around abortion. This relationship is concentrated within three movements in conservative politics: one guided by Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, one by the Tea Party in the early 2010s, and one by Donald Trump in the late 2010s.