Vertical Polarization

As Druckman and Levendusky (2019) point out, orientations toward party elites and supporters are conceptually distinct – Röllicke (2023) refers to measures based on the former as vertical polarization and those based on the latter as horizontal polarization – and may, therefore, also differ empirically.

Initial findings from the Netherlands (Harteveld 2021), Israel (Gidron et al. 2022), and Romania (Ciobanu and Sandu 2022) suggest that evaluations of parties and partisans are strongly but not perfectly correlated. Using survey data from Spain, Comellas Bonsfills (2022) shows that affective polarization measured by feelings toward parties tends to overestimate the extent to which people dislike voters of opposing parties but that the gap between party and partisan dislike decreases in the ideological distance between partisans. Finally, Reiljan et al. (2023), by computing measures of affective polarization from the CSES’s like-dislike questions on parties and their leaders, show that both are strongly correlated but that affective polarization toward parties is stronger than toward their leaders. In contrast, by using distinct measures for out-party polarization (party thermometer) and out-partisan polarization (social distance measures), Tichelbaecker et al. (2023) find only a modest relationship between both concepts.

Measures

Use cases

Publications that address affective polarization: