Party Dyads and In-Out-Party Differences

In political systems with just two parties, polarization describes the distance between these two poles. Therefore, much of the classical American polarization literature, ideological or affective, relied on the difference between a respondent’s inparty and outparty, either based on like-dislike scores or the perception of the parties’ positions.

Party dyads can be seen as a related form of measurement in multiparty systems, where the difference between two selected parties is taken as an indication of general polarization. This can be done with just one or with multiple dyads. It describes a very tangible form of polarization that can be used to show how relationships to individual parties are affected (Bantel (2023)) or to compare polarization levels between two- and multiparty systems (Gidron et al. (2020)).

Use cases

Publications that use this measure:

TitleAuthors
Can’t We All Just Get Along?
  • Adams et al. (2023)
Camps, not just parties
  • Bantel (2023)
When polarised feelings towards parties spread to voters
  • Comellas Bonsfills (2022)
Misinformation, Narratives, and Intergroup Attitudes: Evidence from India
  • Daxecker, Fjelde, Prasad (2025)
American Affective Polarization in Comparative Perspective
  • Gidron et al. (2020)
Affective Polarization and Misinformation Belief
  • Jenke (2023)
Affective polarization in a word: Open-ended and self-coded evaluations of partisan affect
  • Kiesel and Amlani (2025)
Election campaigns and the cyclical nature of emotions
  • Öhberg and Cassel (2023)