Dynamics of Partisan-Brexit Sorting, Polarization, and the Role of Party Leaders

• In Event: Affective Polarization and Public Opinion

Abstract

Recent scholars have well established the important role of partisan sorting in shaping inter-party feelings. However, extant studies have treated social sorting as the "static state" and have not investigated whether sudden sorting due to party position changes immediately leads to stronger affective polarization. In this study, I analyze partisan-Brexit sorting as a driver of affective polarization and evaluate whether sudden party position changes induced by a leadership change cause sorted partisans to hold a stronger tendency of affective polarization. To investigate the expectation, this study focuses on three leader changes within the Conservative Party in Britain. Conducting in-depth analyses with the dataset of British Election Study Internet Panel, I find that sorted partisans i.e. Leaver-Conservatives and Remainer-Labours, show a greater level of affective polarization just after the drastic position shifts of the Conservative Party on Brexit due to leadership changes. Additional analyses confirm the consistency of the conclusion across different settings and the validity of proposed mechanisms. This study leads to a deeper understanding of social sorting and highlights the important role of party leaders in shaping partisan emotional divisions.

Author

• Wataru Onishi, University of California, Riverside