How Far Can Partisanship and Polarization Go? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment on COVID-19

During the last two decades, a significant amount of political science research consistently problematised the phenomenon of partisanship and polarisation. Although that is the case, polarization is still a fuzzy one, and scholars frequently link the concept to other well-established political science concepts for creating a clearer picture. In that sense, partisanship is a frequently used one. Several studies claimed that recently partisanship has changed and developed into a specific type of social identity that shapes especially one specific type of polarisation, called as affective polarisation. Although we know that partisanship and affective polarisation research is on the rise, surprisingly, we have only scant knowledge about how it affects our policy choices. Motivated by this niche, this piece investigates a crucial dimension of this puzzle and displays how partisanship and affective polarisation shapes policy choices utilising the proposed policies related to the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Such an effort is essential, at least for two reasons. First, by providing evidence about the power of affective polarisation on policy choices, it will be possible to comment on if and how citizen polarisation matters for politics. And second, it would be of great benefit to understand whether the political dispositions or the practical considerations influence policy preferences. Based on the arguments above, this paper analysed how partisanship and affective polarisation shapes the approval of policies related to COVID-19 by using a conjoint experiment that was fielded in a country representative face-to-face survey. The analysis separates two policy areas of elections and media freedom, referring to the conditions newly developed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings showed clear evidence on the fact that participants are more likely to approve policy proposals if their political party offers them. Moreover, regardless of party identifications, participants preferred policies that support media freedom. However, the picture is not that clear for the proposals which propose to postpone elections due to COVID-19.